
Rnnk .0 \^^S T] ^ 



coFmicirr deposit. 



Copyright, 1914, by 
C. UuKAY ROBKKTSON 



APR 1^ 1^1^ 






CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Pathway vii 

Prayer for the New Year i 

When the Days Grow Soft 3 

Summer in the Coimtry 19 

In the Parsonage Back Yard 21 

When it Rains in the Country 37 

Summer Dusk 43 

Night Rain 45 

When Dawn Comes Across the Fields 53 

Just Before the Leaves Turn 81 

The Grapevine 109 

A Winter Day on a Country Circuit 117 

When the Wind Blew 129 

When the Snow Falls 139 

Winter Dusk 157 



m 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING 
PAGE 



" The view is open" lo i^ 

" When dawn comes across the fields" 53 v^ 

" The incomparable sweep and arch of the majestic 

dome" • 58 1^ 

" The water lies low among rushes" 100 ^ 

" The birch is bizarre in his silver rags" 109 i^ 

"The bed of the stream forms a passageway among 

the trees" 123 ^ 



THE PATHWAY 

A YEAR is the most commonplace and the most 
wonderful thing there is. It is commonplace 
when it means just twelve months of doing — 
working and delving into material things — twelve 
months of enduring life in the ordinary ways; 
but it is wonderful when it means twelve months 
of being — ^growing up into big things, seeing beau- 
tiful things — twelve months of living. And the 
difference between the commonplace and the won- 
derful is measured by the angle of vision between 
eyes that are turned down and in and eyes turned 
up and out; and an angle is a point. So the pas- 
sage from the commonplace to the wonderful is 
just the turning of the eye upon its axis. You do 
not need feet or wings to make the journey; it is a 
journey of an angle, a point. 

This writer is no botanist, or entomologist, or 
meteorologist, or scientist of any sort whatever. 
He loves the good world as God made it, and the 
year, to him, is a pathway of delight. He cannot 
tell you the Latin names of flowers and birds and 
insects, nor the scientific words for "cloud" and 
"snowflake" and "raindrop"; but he loves to look 
at these things and finds them well worth look- 
ing at. 

So come down the year with me! 

vii 



PRAYER FOR THE NEW YEAR 

Hold thou my hand 
In thine, O Lord, for thy great hand is strong, 

And many are the stony places set 
For my unwary feet, the way along, 
And myriad the trials to be met. 
Hold thou, O Lord, my hand! 

Because thou knowest, 
Lead me along the changes of the year: 

The days when gray earth meets a grayer sky, 
The other days when tender skies are clear; 
For only thou art great among the high — 
I, of the lowly, lowest. 

Hold fast my hand; 
Then shall I walk adown the year serene, 

Grow old as swings the pendule to and fro, 
But fearing not, though all may not be seen 
Of where I travel when the sun drops low, 
Close held by thy strong hand. 

Ay, hold my hand ! 
Be paths where I shall go or rough or smooth, 
Be men whom I shall meet or foe or friend. 
Be days with tempest drear, or calm to soothe, 
I care not — so through all until the end, 
Thou hold, O Lord, my hand. 



WHEN THE DAYS GROW SOFT 

You can never get lost in wandering through 
the changes and turns of the year. That is one 
wonderful and tender thing about the way God 
orders things. The soul that goes out into the 
good, big, out-of-door world and becomes a citi- 
zen of that world, and lives and behaves as a 
citizen ought, is never at a loss for anything. 
And more than all is he never at a loss to know 
where he is. You can miss your way in a city 
and become utterly bewildered half a block from 
home. And you can lose yotirself in the woods, 
and travel in a circle of despair for hotirs, and 
grow more bewildered each time you pass its 
landmarks. But that is only when you try to do 
what you think is consistent with yoiu* indoor 
ideals or habits or thought. If you will yield to 
the spirit of the woods you need never go astray 
for a moment. There is a mysterious something 
which folds you round, and leads you, and pro- 
tects you. It is as if the very trees sheltered you 
with their leaves, and whispered to you the way 
you ought to go. You can become terribly con- 
fused in the world of business too, and ttimble 
down and spill all your money out of your pockets, 

3 



DOWN tup: year 

and get bumped until you do not know where you 
are. And in the world of philosophy the clouds 
are so beautiful and so high and so filmy that you 
frequently mistake the way and deduce when 
you ought to induce. And you can get so mud- 
dled in mathematics that the twenty-third propo- 
sition sounds like ragtime, and you go dancing 
along the hypotenuse under the impression that 
it is the shortest distance between two points. 
You can get lost almost any-where, even if you 
try to understand the situation and to live up to 
it. But as you walk the paths of the year it is with 
absolute certainty. No one who loves this year- 
world in God's system enough to look at and 
listen to it can ever make a mistake about where 
he is. For each season has its characteristics that 
are like the voices of friends. You can never 
make the blunder of thinking it is summer when 
it is still spring. Right up to the moment of 
transition you know it is spring; and right after 
the moment you know it is summer. And you do 
not know it because the sun is warmer and the 
wind more whispery in summer than in spring, 
nor because the sky is a different blue, nor be- 
cause family cares have stopped the singing of 
the birds, nor by any or all of these things. You 
know it just because it is different. The heart of 
the world out of doors beats to the pulses of one 

4 



WHEN THE DAYS GROW SOFT 

who loves it and the pulses bound with nature's 
heart. And there is no mistake because there is 
sympathy. Each season has its own characteris- 
tics, and when one sees and hears and smells and 
feels he knows by that where he is in the world of 
the year. 

No one could mistake the spring for any other 
time. Just as soon as the day comes when he 
goes out under the trees — naked or with just a 
misty bloom of green showing — and takes off his 
hat to the breeze that may still be cold, and 
snuffs the air and looks. up at the sky, and thinks 
how soft it all is, he knows the spring has come in 
that day. And when he finds the softness gone 
and all the world a world of ardent splendor he 
knows the stmimer has stepped in front of the 
spring. For softness is characteristic of the days 
of spring. So it is spring, and the sky is soft like 
a baby's eyes, and the air is soft like a kiss, and 
the earth under foot is soft like a carpet, and the 
music of the stream is soft like the voice of a girl, 
and the leaves that are just opening are soft like 
a dream, and the day is soft like a woman's heart. 

Soft and tender as the dreams of a child; there 
is no mistake possible; it is spring. The soft sky 
arches above in a blue promise. The spring sky 
is of a color that is matched nowhere else. If you 
can think of all the delights you hope for, and all 

5 



DOWN TIIK M:AI{ 

the good things you want to do, and all the beau- 
tiful things you want to see, and all the music 
you want to hear, and all the blessings your soul 
longs for — if you can think of all these at once 
and get them all into the right order, just as they 
ought to be, in your mind; and if you can keep 
them all before you just right, and hold them all 
together in mind and not let one slip nor forget a 
single melody of them ; and if you can gather them 
all like this and think that One who can do it has 
promised to give them all to you, and if you can 
think of this promise as having a color, that is the 
color of the sky in spring. There is nothing that 
so well designates the blue of the sky in early 
spring as to say it is the blue of promise. Some- 
how, the springtime always seems ver>' intimate to 
me, and the sky is closer to the earth then than it 
ever is again. When the earth comes forth after 
her winter's retirement, if such it be, she comes 
into a familiar, cozy, homely universe, where for a 
little while she warms her hands and rubs the 
sleep out of her eyes and looks out of the windows 
and plans for the days to come. Out under the 
low spring sky one may stand with his old earth- 
mother and help her plan and know her hopes, 
for a promise always goes with an aspiration. 
We do not look for promises of things we do not 
hope for. This is the morning time of the year, 

6 



WHEN THE DAYS GROW SOFT 

and all the world is a child standing at the win- 
dow looking to see what the weather is going to be. 
What do you hope for? Look into this near sky 
and see the promise of it. The blue spring sky 
always promises, in the name of the year, all that 
we ask for of good and sweet and pure. And the 
good old year has never failed yet to live up to 
the promise of the spring. It is promise- time; 
look up and know what the year will bring. 

You have wished for much that you have not 
received? Well, what of that? So have I. Is 
that a failiu-e of spring's pledge? No. The year 
has always brought for you what you read pledged 
on that blue scroll. You have not received it? 
That is a different matter. Did you look for it? 
Did you go after it? Did you wait and watch 
and stretch hands for it? Did you let the year 
into your heart with it? The year will always 
redeem the promise of the spring. Remember 
that spring is promising the very things you need 
to make you more beautiful and happy. Why 
should you not receive them? You must go out 
after them, look for them. The year has always 
brought them, but they will never be thrown into 
your lap; you must reach up to get them. The 
things that are good and true and beautiful? 
The good you want to do? The blessings your 
soul craves? Never has passed a year that has 

7 



DOWN THE YEAR 

not brought them. If you have missed them, it 
is your fault, for in God's j^ood world are all of 
these. And the soft blue sky of the spring prom- 
ises them. I will try to find more of them this year. 

The sky bends very near and the blue is neither 
pale nor vivid. It is as if the vividness were sub- 
dued just a little by tears. For there is such a 
tremendous content to the promise of spring and 
the potentialities of the year that one cannot 
contemplate them without a catch at the throat 
and a dimming of the eye. But that mid-bhie sky 
is beautiful. It is always beautiful in all its 
blues, and no one may say that one blue is more 
beautiful than another. This is beautiful with the 
beauty of possibility. This is a blue that has in it 
all the vividness of summer and the richness of 
autumn and the ruggedness of winter. It is the 
blue of promise in deed and in truth. 

It bends low, this sky of promise, and the 
world is very intimate and cozy. And you can 
look deep into it and see the wonders of the year, 
the glories of the coming days. It is like the 
eyes of a child: as clear and soft and as deep 
withal, yet with some little mystery — the con- 
cealment of all that lies behind, while revealing 
all the illimited possibilities that lie behind as 
well — that mystery that makes it impossible to 
gaze into them without a little feeling of awe. 

8 



WHEN THE DAYS GROW SOFT 

The ground is soft where the frost has gone 
out, and the feet make a musical Httle murmur as 
one tramps the sodden fields or muddy roadways. 
You can get very miry and dirty in the early 
spring. But no matter; you can also get very 
mysteriously happy. And the sunshine is like 
opals and amethysts shining from the bottom of a 
clear spring, bright but a little misty and quivery. 

One reason the world seems so small and cozy 
to-day is because the leaves are gone and one can 
see a long way through the open spaces. It is an 
open world. That is why it seems so near; you 
can see all of it. Come back here to the fields 
and woods in a few months and all will be lux- 
uriantly green and the heavy foliage will shut you 
in so that you cannot see beyond your own shadow. 
Then, because you must rely upon imagination to 
tell you what is beyond that verdant veil, all will 
seem great and mighty. But now you can see, 
and it is close, after all. A great many things are 
like that. We imagine there is much beyond our 
sight and beyond our reach and we repine because 
we are shut in from it. Then some day the leaves 
fall and we see. But O how often we see when 
it is too late, when the sun is setting and there is 
no time to go and explore the vistas opened ! Thank 
God for the spring with its open view! I will have 
more courage now to go on next summer, and the 

9 



DOWN THE YEAH 

next, and through the year and the ages, now 
that I have caught a gUmpse of the things I have 
imagined. There is much for us in God's world: 
much of tree and sky and brook-music; much of 
happiness and honor and knowledge. We ought 
to depend more upon them. After all, God has 
given us a world within our reach, one we may 
possess and use and enjoy. And, of course, it is 
not too big for the soul he means to possess and 
enjoy it. The leaves are thick sometimes, and we 
imagine it is terrible and vast and lonely. Then 
comes a day of spring, and we know it for our 
own, close and homelike and accessible. I am 
going out more in the spring hereafter and find 
out more courage and confidence. 

The view is open. The leaves are all gone and 
one can look far down the aisles of the woods and 
far into the thickets. And overhead one can see 
great stretches of sky, only marked and striped 
by the bare boughs. There is a peculiar impres- 
sion of freedom and expansion that comes from 
the openness and one has a sense of escape that 
very speedily becomes aspiration and the very 
soul stretches out and up to measure up to the 
emancipated world. 

A soft glow seems to fall from the sky and fill 
all the open world with a wonderful mystery. 
You cannot say the air is rosy; but if you could 

lO 




THE VIEW IS OI'EN 



WHEN THE DAYS GROW SOFT 

translate a color into a touch, that is what you 
would say. The springtime is a mystic time 
though; and who can say that at this wonder- 
period the magic is not at work, and colors are 
really felt, and flavors are seen, and thoughts are 
heard, and music is caught upon upturned cheek 
or outstretched palm? So many strange things 
happen in the first wonder of life that I think it 
is even so. Be it as it may, there is a sweet glow 
over all the world. Yet there is a keenness in the 
wind too, a keenness that tingles through the glow 
like the tang through the sweetness of wine. It 
just makes the glow more noticeable and more 
effective, gives it a spiciness so that glow and 
softness bite into the soul and lodge there. Spring 
is the promise-time and this keenness is the 
security for the promise. It is no flabby senti- 
mentality that will promise an3rthing just to 
please everyone that comes out of the spring sky. 
It is not easy-going subterfuge to escape annoy- 
ance. The promise of the year is a virile one 
with spring behind it. And this edge to the air is 
the evidence of its cutting-in power — it cuts into 
matters of earth and of life and leaves its mark. 

Somehow, it has always seemed as if there 
could be no place in all God's world for the 
merely neutral, to say nothing of the sycophant- 
ish. All the wonderful and multiplex forms of the 

II 



DOWN THK YKAR 

outdoor world mean something. They are not the 
adventitious happenings in a haphazard conglom- 
eration of things. They are real doings and 
achievements; and that is why you can find so 
much companionship among the trees and birds 
and flowers; and that is why there is such wonder 
for the soul when the clouds mass and roll and 
the hail drums, and the smoky fog or hoary frost 
makes mystery of the world. It is the recognition 
of kinship between a soul that means something 
and a world that means something. When the 
spring promises yon w^hat you want, it is a real 
pledge backed up by the purpose of all that is 
involved in the good outdoor world. Because 
your soul is a power, an entity, a force, you find 
a response. Keen from the hills, where just a 
little green shows, the wind comes down through 
the open aisles like the piccolo note through the 
melting melody of a symphony. And it first chills, 
then invigorates. The languor is chased away 
and, instead, the great joy of the rosy spring air 
sinks into the heart, and the heart swells and 
bounds with the very exaltation of all that the 
promise of the year covers. You are not softened 
and steeped in ennui by it, but aroused and in- 
spired and made to bound with the joy of it. The 
springtime atmosphere is not one to lie down in 
and absorb; it must l)c drunk in great gulps and 

12 



WHEN THE DAYS GROW SOFT 

drafts. If you try to luxuriate in its softness 
you will be chilled to the bone; but if you take it 
up into your heart that softness and glow become 
a part of you and mark yoiir life ever afterward. 

I wonder if that is not why so many folks get 
lean and irritable and shiver so much — because 
they have tried to catch the glow and sweetness 
of things without letting the chill cut in. You 
cannot do that; you must keep the lungs full to 
the bursting point and the muscles moving. Then 
the heart glows, and the nerves tingle, and all is 
joyous. 

The winy air sparkles and bubbles with notes 
of early birds. Only a few of them have come 
back home yet ; but how glad they are to get back 
and how delighted they are to see one another! 
The song- time does not come so early as this, 
but these little fellows are cheery and vivacious, 
and their happy little chirpings and liltings are 
just the music to carry well through this soothing, 
stimulating air. They have not begun to sing in 
earnest; there is promise in their little trills and 
warbles too. The singing time will come a little 
later. And the notes are like flakes of crystal 
flashing through the mild simshine. 

All the trees but one or two are yet bare or 
with just a showing of green. The oak still wears 
his dark-red winter cloak and rustles the dry 



DOWN TIIK VKAK 

leaves in good-natured jeering at the more eager 
trees which have shed their winter habiliments 
before providing themselves with summer ones, 
like improvident folk who are too eager for a 
change. You never catch the oak doing that. 
He is too thrifty and matter-of-fact. He will 
never let the old leaves drop until the swelling 
buds in the little cups at the bases of the leaf- 
stems push them off. He will have his handsome 
new coat ready before he sheds his tattered old 
one. And when he dons the new one he will 
present an appearance of substantial competency 
that will be altogether to his credit among the 
more frivolous and fancy-clad trees. 

A maple standing out against a hillside is 
beautiful in a filmy dress of yellow-green. Not 
many of the trees show any sign of leaves yet, 
and the maple seems to be just getting ready to 
dress, the color is so dainty and so filmy. 

Through the soft green of the budding maple 
can be seen the white of a blossoming service- 
berry. At first one thinks it a patch of snow still 
clinging to the hillside. The blossoms are as 
white as the snowfiakes, and the little spot of 
white behind the maple has just that pure, wistful 
something that always seems to hang about the 
last melting snowdrifts in the creases of the banks 
and hillsides. The service-berr>' is altogether a 

M 



WHEN THE DAYS GROW SOFT 

bold and confident sort of a tree, for it puts forth 
its bloom while all the other trees stand naked, 
and the white clumps dotting the hills among the 
gaunt and naked branches are like the flashes one 
sometimes catches of pure and sweet thoughts 
and doings through the gaunt unloveliness that is 
so in evidence everywhere. 

It is rather an unpropitious time to bloom too, 
for there is no assurance that frost is over for 
good and that the pale blossoms will not be 
nipped and ruined. But the tree is so anxious to 
do something worth while, to give out a little 
beauty or fragrance, that it will take a chance on 
getting its flowers spoiled. I wish more people 
were like that ; a great many kindnesses are wasted 
and more never happen at all because some one 
waits until it is perfectly safe. 

The water in the brook gurgles and sings across 
the stones, a veritable wonder of grace of move- 
ment and melody of sound. There is something 
indefinable in the music of running water at all 
times, but when the first buds are bursting and 
the first timid flowers are blowing and the first 
birds are twittering, when the service-berry is 
white on the hill-side and the maple is just green- 
ing, then it is so transcendently wonderful that it 
catches the very heart and sweeps its strings until 
they tremble and sing; and the melody of them is 

15 



DOWN Tin: VKAI{ 

too sad and glad and strange for lips to shout or 
throat to sound — the great, tender melody of all 
first things. And it thrills and trembles through 
and through the soul. Who can listen to the 
water just freed from gyves of ice as it sings 
through fields yet brown and under bushes yet 
bare and not be thrilled to ecstasy that is pain? 
Never tell me that he hears it who does not want 
to stop ears and turn away but cannot, and must 
listen until soul and brain are throbbing with the 
rhythm of it anrl eyes are suffused with the deep 
pathos of it and cheeks flush with the ineffable 
joy of it. Such is the music of the water in the 
spring. 

And the beauty of it is as wonderful; for when 
it runs over the stones the surface is thrown up 
into wonderful mounds, and pitted with hollows 
as round and deep as the curves of a babe's body. 
The stones at the bottom are but stones, yet they 
fret the water until the surface is troubled. They 
are stones that trouble, yet the troubling brings 
beauty beyond compare, as the rough things that 
mar and trouble the peacefulness of us, in the 
very troubling make the outward seeming more 
beautiful. The stones lie clustered and heaped 
and hard. Above them the water is patterned and 
graceful. The constant motion does not pennit 
shifting and changing of the pattern. The flow 

i6 



WHEx\ THE DAYS GROW SOFT 

is steady in pressure and in movement, so the 
little hollows and mounds stay as if molded in 
crystal, and a flicker now and then as a breeze 
sweeps the surface, or a tiny variation of pressure 
prevails for an instant, just gives them that 
crystallike look in perfection. You cannot mine 
such diamonds as those anjrwhere in the earth. 
But anywhere God's waters flow above God's 
stones, you may have them just by looking for 
them. 

And the stones themselves! You may look 
down deep and see them. And no cameo was 
ever so delicately cut, no intaglio ever so graceful 
as those in the stones where the water plays be- 
tween them and the sunlight. The wonderful 
pattern of mound and hollow above is no more 
wonderful than the pattern in the stones below. 
It is like a fantastic design bom of the mystery of 
the spring and photographed on them with the 
water for a lens. 

And as the water ripples the effect is that of 
light flowing in endless stream over the stones. 
The water ripples and flows above. But below it, 
the other stream, the stream of light, flows close 
above the stones. And it is as beautiful as a 
dream of home. 

The ground is covered with thousands of little 
white flowers. You will not see them unless you 

17 



DOWN Tin: \\:\\{ 

look down. But when you do the eye is filled 
with the pure glory of it. A little white flower 
that may have a great botanical name or none at 
all, but the whiteness of it, and the multitude of 
it, and the modest self -obscuration of it are 
channing. Here and there among the white a 
blue violet peeps up. There arc not many violets 
yet — just enough to accentuate the beauty of the 
little white flower. But there arc enough to call 
and hold attention to the glory underfoot. You 
will miss a great deal unless you look down 
sometimes. 

And now as the chill comes sharper down from 
the hills, and as the blue fades from the sky, and 
the gracious sun hides behind the maple tree, the 
pale moon shines out like a silver sickle among 
the flowering stars. And if you will turn your 
face toward the town again you will see across 
the neutral sky, just beneath the early moon, a 
dark, rolling cloud, narrow and well-defined, that 
comes from a smokestack over yonder. The day 
with its magic and wonder is done, and in the 
evening the smoke from the cooling altars of 
labor ascends to heaven. 



i8 



SUMMER IN THE COUNTRY 

With just a dust of gold upon the green, 

The fields, half -ripened, spread beneath a sky- 
Like plates of turquoise burnished and domed 
high, 

And shreds of cloud float in the space between. 

Above the heads of wheat a fiery sheen 

Makes brassy glimmer, parching, hot and dry; 
A little, silent, furtive breeze slips by — 

The ears, responsive, whisper, nod, and lean. 

As beats the heat upon the gilding grain, 
So on a life when gold begins to show. 

Fall fierce the rays of dole and scorching pain, 
And brazen glimmer meets unrest below; 

Yet ever falls the cooling welcome rain. 

And ever through the field the sweet winds go. 



19 



IN THE PARSONAGE BACK YARD 

The study is close and warm, and the desk is 
all in a litter, and, somehow, the sermon does not 
grow satisfactorily. I cannot put any life into 
its dead form as it lies before me. The back yard 
is cool and shady, and I will go out there and 
think it over in the open air. Thought ought to 
be more clear in the open air anyway, and this 
parsonage back yard is a quiet, secluded one 
where a preacher can have his thoughts to him- 
self. So I'll go out there and walk back and forth 
under the trees while I joint up the rest of this 
sermon and dress it in presentable form for next 
Sunday. 

It is an ideal place to make sermons. White 
summer-da}^ clouds roll up against the blue sky 
like the dreams and visions which come when you 
look upward at evening and think of heaven- 
billowy, soft, deep. And this is a stunmer-blue 
sky. There are as many blues in the sky as there 
are seasons in the year — and more. ^AHhien I hear 
anyone speaking loosely about "the blue in the 
sky" I want to reprimand him and ask him to 
discriminate and teU me which blue he means. 
They are as different as children's eyes. The 

21 



DOWN THE YEWl 

blue of spring is a tender, dainty, vague blue, 
more a promise than a reality, which sets the 
sense and heart alert for the intoxicating fulfill- 
ment. The blue of summer is a deep blue, glorious 
and bright, that fills the eye with painful ecstasy 
— rich, intense, brilliant. Autiunn drapes the sky 
with the sheerest mist-veils, and the blue of the 
fall-time is a hazy, lazy, retrospective blue, sug- 
gesting the glories that are gone, mellowed and 
softened and saddened by the tragedy of the 
dying siunmer — such a blue as you see in old 
tapestries, filmy and inscrutable. Winter shows a 
hard, rigid, steely blue like the glint of a well- 
tempered blade. 

In a little open space between the trees I pause 
and look up. Just above my head the deep, silver- 
shot green of the trees parts and rolls back in 
billows of emerald glor>', and beyond swells the 
big, majestic mass of a cloud. The forms of leaf 
and bud are sharply photographed against the 
whiteness. The clear background of sky throws 
the broad mass of cloud into high relief, and the 
green, blue, and white color-scheme is worked out 
with skill never equaled by brush and canvas. 
Artists find fault with the combination of blue 
and green and say they kill each other when 
brought together. And no doubt they are right. 
But the colors have been killing each other ever 



IN THE PARSONAGE BACK YARD 

since God stretched a blue sky above green trees 
and sent breezes to whisper to men to look up. 
And O, my soul, is anything more beautiful than 
these mutually destructive colors in the simlight 
of summer, with cloud vignettes framing the 
picture in sweeping lines of ineffable grandeur? 

I am a king this afternoon, walking the stately 
corridors of my palace. Over me springs the 
azure arch of the wonderful roof, above my head 
is a canopy of green and silver, and I tread a 
carpet of green and gold. The glimmer of golden 
sunlight on the grass — so near and so wonderful — 
catches my glance even as I gaze into the vault of 
the sky. I walk a pavement of gold. Not a 
street! No, no! My own palace floor, designed 
in most wonderful mosaic of gold on green. I can 
hear the tinkle and chime of the golden disks as 
they slip and pile and scatter again beneath my 
feet. "In my Father's house are many mansions" 
and this parsonage back yard is the one allotted 
to me. I am content, for the light gleams golden 
from the grass, falls in floods of glory through the 
trees, transmutes to molten opals on the white 
side of the house, and my mansion is glorious be- 
yond expression. The light and shade on ground 
and house-walls, the flickering of shadows in won- 
derful play and combination, the warm glow, the 
color, the sweet breeze — it is all my Father's and 

23 



DOWN THE VKAH 

mine. But O, my heart, contain thyself and break 
not, for thou canst not yet compass the splendor. 

The flashes of light are all of the same shape, 
rounded like great golden coins, as if the treasurer 
of heaven in very exuberance of good will to men 
had thrown handful s of minted glory upon the 
earth, and the shadows on the grass are deep and 
soft and velvety black, while those on the house 
are shallow, flat, hard, and purple. Who shall say 
that these things are not so because God would 
bring us to contemplate the mysteries and won- 
ders of his earthly doings and ponder them, and 
fail to comprehend them, and so to glory in him 
the more? 

And as if to lay it hard upon my heart that 
this is the place of God's presence, the sunlight 
dances over some playthings lying on the grass 
where the little boy who lives in the parsonage 
dropped them when he went to take his afternoon 
nap: a little spade near a tiny mound of earth 
where he has planted some flower seeds; his 
wheelbarrow full of leaves and grass; some pieces 
of rope harnessing a tree; a comcrib built of twigs 
and wrecked by heedless little feet; a wide- 
brimmed straw hat on the grass. The back yard 
is suddenly very lonely and silent. The winds 
sing and the birds chirrup, and the bees hum, and 
all the siunmer sounds are here, but it is an incom- 

24 



IN THE PARSONAGE BACK YARD 

plete symphony, because I have listened to it 
when the melody of childish laughter floated in 
the flood of summer's harmony. Those toys are 
as much a part of the furnishings of my mansion 
as the sunshine itself, and they remind me of the 
angels' visits which God permits to me in my times 
of bitterness and trial, when my little boy bursts 
into the study, or comes to me imder the trees, 
and turns to me eyes full of the innocence of 
childhood so that I see in them the limpid deeps of 
a perfect faith and take courage. It has always 
seemed to me as if God must be very near a little 
child, and when he permits me to hold one in my 
arms I do it reverently. And the sunshine falls 
more brightly on the little straw hat, and the breeze 
is gentler where the flowers are planted. And O 
may stmshine ever be upon the golden head, and 
the little hands be ever employed in works of 
beauty which may no ungentle winds destroy! 

Over yonder is the parsonage garden, where the 
beans have pitched their wigwams of tall poles 
behind the protection of the thick, white-flaked, 
light-green rampart of the peas, and the turnips 
and beets wave wide flags in the air. That garden 
is a color-study for a painter. You do not know 
how many greens there are until you have looked 
at a parsonage garden. There is the dark, glossy 
green of the beans; the light, bloomy green of the 

25 



D(m\ Tin: viOAii 

peas; the red-veined j;reen of beets; the fuzzy, 
prickly green of tuniips and radishes; the pale 
green of waving corn-blades; the yellow-green of 
feathery lettuce. These greens all blend and 
melt together until you cannot tell where potatoes 
leave oft" and beans begin. 

I think I shall lie down under a tree. You can 
always think things out better lying on your 
back under a tree in summer. A team passes 
drawing a heavy load, and the horses eye with 
wonder the long, queer-looking object, so evi- 
dently alive, but so indifferent to the fresh green 
grass as to profane it by stretching out on it at 
full length. It will spoil several good mouthfuls 
of it. 

This is a countr}^ parsonage, and a meadow 
comes right down to the fence, a meadow full of 
waving grass, and shadows that roll across it like 
the sea, and yellow pools of sunlight in green 
banks, and whispers, and flashes, and glints of 
light among the stems of timothy, and wonder, 
and beauty. A few plumes of the downy fox-tail 
grass beckon here and there above the green, and 
a meadow lark whistles and whistles and whistles. 
Two cows stand knee-deep in the grass and look 
across at me under the tree. There is grass 
enough for all three of us; and if I prefer lying on 
mine to eating it they regard the preference with 

26 



IN THE PARSONAGE BACK YARD 

complacence. You cannot account for the tastes 
of men and cattle. 

What a great depth a tree has when you look 
up into it! You stand on the ground and glance 
to its top and estimate that it is twenty or thirty 
or forty feet high. But lie down under it and 
look up into the wonderful tracery of branches, 
and the splendor of glossy leaves, and the perfect 
symmetry of whorled twigs, and the exquisite 
grace of the tapering trunk, and the distance 
stretches out until the lines of the perspective 
meet in the very sky and the tip of the tree 
points the beauty of cloud and blue vault. 
Dwellers in fiats and city apartments think this 
world is a fiat and dreary and commonplace old 
planet. But they have never seen a tree from 
below. When once one has gazed up into those 
leagues of wonder the commonplace vanishes and 
he treads an enchanted world. 

The branches of my ash tree underlie each 
other like the rungs of a great spiral ladder. The 
longer lower branches underlap the shorter as the 
eye travels upward, and thus the whole tree is in 
view at once, and the vision bounds, leap on leap, 
through the lateral spaces between the branches, 
up, and up, to the tip of the last leafy swinging 
twig and is swtmg out into infinity as a child 
swings a bubble. 

27 



DOWN Tin: VKAK 

There is much to see from under a tree before 
you travel to the last leaf and take that leap into 
the infinite blue. You can get acquainted with a 
tree better from below than by mere casual 
scrutiny such as you get from ordinary inter- 
course. Until you see it from below a maple tree 
is much like an ash, and both are not so very 
dilTcrent from the elm. But when you see the 
under side of the wonderful architecture they are 
as different as the faces of friends. The soft 
maple shows thick, strong-looking boughs placed 
wide apart and sloping upward very sharply like 
springing Gothic arches. The ash has more limbs 
than the maple, and they slant more easily up- 
ward and swing more gently toward the sky. 
The elm's branches are nearly horizontal, and 
droop at the tips. This stately tree is a real 
aristocrat, a nobleman of true grace and greatness, 
always diffusing from those down-reaching fingers 
something of its own grace and gentle stateliness. 
The fruit trees are verj' careless — mere networks 
of small, twisted twigs arranged ungracefully and 
unsystematically. But they may be pardoned 
their slovenliness, for, like ovenvorked house- 
wives, they are really too busy to look after their 
appearance. They must prepare innumerable re- 
pasts besides doing a prodigious amount of enter- 
taining. There is a great house party on in the 

28 



IN THE PARSONAGE BACK YARD 

cherry trees to-day, and the enjoyment of the 
feathered guests is of a noisy kind that must fill 
the heart of an anxious hostess with joy and her 
nerves with imcomfortable tingles. 

Above my face the ash-keys hang in pale, 
yellowish green, feathery clusters, like the light, 
indefinite dreams of the summer day. Cherries 
glisten in the sun like showers of rubies, ready to 
drop down to me when the moment comes that I 
yield to the mystery of the summer and gain the 
secret of it all. Then they will be mine, rubies 
rich as blood and more precious than stones of 
mine or river-bed. 

The trees are very tall, the sky is just beyond 
that last waving tip, the leaves shimmer and 
shimmer and shimmer, the cherries glow and 
glisten, the light dances on the leaves and grass, 
the wind is warm and light, the sky is blue as the 
ocean and deep as a woman's eyes, the light is 
rare and sweet, and, like a dandelion fluff, I float 
up, away, through the wonder-mazes of the 
boughs, up to that last swinging tip, past it, out 
into^the blue, up, up, up, up. Eh? No, of course 
not. I am making a sermon. Asleep! The idea! 

But the robin does not believe me, and cocks 
his head very knowingly and sings, impudently: 
"Yes, you were! Yes, you were! Yes, you were!" I 
remonstrate with him for his impertinence, but it 

29 



DOWN THE YEAR 

does no good. He nins about on the j;round in lit- 
tle, ridiculous, zig-zag patterings, and looks at me 
from the comer of his eye, and flirts his impudent 
tail in a manner that plainly says that I cannot 
fool him, and he would like to know what I am 
doing in his back yard under his tree anywa>'. 
Then he ignores me altogether and goes to catch- 
ing worms almost at my very feet. This is adding 
insult to injury, for I cannot see any signs of bug 
or worm. But Mr. Robin calmly cocks his head 
as if listening, makes a jumping little run, dives 
forward, and gobbles up the morsel without so 
much as offering me a taste. To fuither show 
me how little he considers me, he actually smirks 
as it goes down, saying as plainly as a smirk can 
say that it is very good, and he will have another, 
thank you. He watches me furtively all the time 
he is pretending that I am not there, and when he 
wanders too near in his hunting springs away in 
little panicky starts as if scared out of his very 
impertinent wits, but pulls up short after half a 
dozen steps and snatches another grub from the 
grass. I cannot help watching and admiring the 
saucy little rascal, he is so very independent and 
self-reliant and resourceful. But he is startled 
this time and no mistake. I could not prevent that 
sneeze. It scares the robin into a convulsion that 
fairly lifts him into the air. The contrast between 

30 



IN THE PARSONAGE BACK YARD 

his pretended panic and this real fright is lu- 
dicrous. I am sorry for it, but then it really was 
not my fault, and I hope he will soon regain his 
composure. 

The robin is scarcely out of sight among the 
ash boughs when a sparrow comes hopping and 
strutting about my feet. How like people birds 
are! The robin was sarcastic and impudent and 
suspicious. Mr. Sparrow is frankly curious and 
looks me over very calmly, turning his bright 
little beady eyes first one way, then another, in the 
endeavor to size me up from all points of view. 
He hops around me, bouncing like a diminutive 
rubber ball, and chirping incessantly. His inspec- 
tion must be satisfactory, for he drops his wings 
to the ground and goes botmcing jerkily about in 
front of me. But his conceit is to be considerably 
shaken. A modest little brown lady hops into the 
sunlight, and my tiny companion spies her imme- 
diately. His wings drop until they scrape the very 
ground, his head turns upward until the beak 
points at the sky, and his joke of a tail flickers 
like the spoke of a whirligig in a high wind. But 
Madam Brownie will have nothing to do with 
him. His incessant chattering, however, has at- 
tracted the attention of a rival, who lands abruptly, 
squarely before him. No time is wasted in pre- 
liminaries. The battle is on at once. Up and 

31 



DOWN THE ^ EAR 

down, back and forth, in the ^tbss, through the 
trees, rustUng, fluttering, fighting, the tiny coni- 
batants make a commotion Hke a Lilhputian 
hurricane. And such chattering! If the scientific 
fellows ever succeed in translating the speech of 
birds, as they claim to have done that of monkeys, 
the language of the sparrow will be unfit to print. 
The sparrow's morals are bad in other respects as 
well. He is dishonest, and steals my chickens' 
dinner from under their very bills and brags 
about it. The battle goes on with no abatement 
of fury, but the contestants are so very small, 
and the commotion they make is so out of all pro- 
portion that I cannot help laughing, more espe- 
cially as the little brown lady flew off with another 
suitor at the very beginning of hostilities. Still 
fighting, they disappear around the comer of the 
roof, and I can hear the sounds of battle growing 
fainter and fainter until they are drowned in the 
soft, sweet call of a catbird perched in the very 
top of my tree. The sparrow is an altogether 
charming little nuisance. I would not have 
missed that comical fight. 

The catbird calls and calls from his treetop his 
low, soft, sweet call. His mate is down below 
him somewhere among the leaves, and he is 
watching there near her. The catbird is a do- 
mestic fellow, and can always be found at home 

32 



IN THE PARSONAGE BACK YARD 

with his wife and babies except when his business 
calls him away. A little later, when the sun is 
just about to blaze out in a final farewell of 
glory, he will begin singing a song of love and 
utter peace that is worth a day's jotu'ney to hear. 
I have heard hini at sunrise too, and then his song 
is one of most gladsome joy, as if something of 
the bliss of dawn had gotten into his bird heart 
and bubbled over into his throat. I am coming 
back to this back yard this evening to listen to 
him as he sings and sings and sings, full and 
sweet and pure, dropping, as the sun sinks, into 
lower and softer melodies, modulating into tender 
minors and contented little warbles, softer and 
softer, lower and lower, until you can hear only a 
gentle little trill of ineffable restfulness, and you 
know that the little slate-colored wife is asleep 
with the downlings snuggled safely in the bottom 
of the nest. 

A bluejay alights on the pump-handle and yells 
at me. His crest stands straight up with anger 
and impudence, and he fairly quivers with wrath 
as he shrieks his threats of vengeance on the pre- 
simiptuous human who has dared to invade this 
province of his kingdom. I can never make 
friends with the jay. All the other birds are 
amenable to friendly advances, but this flaunting 
braggart will have none of me. I think he must 

33 



DOWxN THE YEAR 

be a sort of Robin Hood and is afraid I will dis- 
cover and betray his retreat. And, tnitli to tell, 
I have never yet seen his home. 

An oriole darts like a thread of orange fire 
through my tree. I follow him with my eye 
through the open vista of boughs, and see him 
swing on a slender twig just above a hanging 
nest. Chirp! Twitter! He dips his velvet black 
head downward for an instant and is away again 
as swiftly and brilliantly as he came. He is a 
shy bird, but a true friend and faithful companion. 

Some pigeons on the roof of the church yonder 
are strutting and cooing, but they are too deeply 
engrossed in their own love-making to give a 
thought to anything or anyone else. 

My back yard is a place of peace. 

The wind pauses. There is a moment of still- 
ness — not silence, but stillness. The leaves hang 
tremulous, waiting, the maple bizarre with her 
clothes turned wrong side out, the hum of insects 
seems a trifle louder, the occasional bird-notes 
sound clear and sweet — it is not silence, it is 
stillness while the breeze rests. Then it comes, 
sweeping and gliding like a dancing maiden, from 
another quarter, bringing a new message. The 
leaves shiver again, then swing obediently into 
their new position floating out on the new cur- 
rent. There is a bewildering change and dazzle 

34 



IN THE PARSONAGE BACK YARD 

on the grass, the cherries gHsten red and glorious. 
The rubies are about to drop. I have waited long. 
I have sought so hard for the secret. Now it has 
come — I am in touch with the soul of the summer, 
and the treasure is mine at last. The magic is 
going to begin now. I have served my novitiate, 
and received the final mysteries of the initiate this 
afternoon, and now the rubies will fall. How 
they swing and glisten in great clusters! How 
they sparkle! How they dip and dip and dip! 
But I cannot quite reach them. Yes, now — the 
wind blows my hair into my eyes, and because I 
lose sight of the red for an instant it is all undone 
and I must serve the long novitiate all over. 
They are cherries again hanging high above my 
head, but beautiful as gems from the sea-caves. 

The music goes on. It is a wonderful symphony. 
The birds pipe the melody in sweet flute-notes, the 
insects sound high clarinets and bassoons, the twigs 
sing like violins, the breeze sweeps in the under- 
tones which bear along and blend the whole into 
the fairy harmony of the June day. 

A shaft of simlight strikes through the tree and 
falls on my face, blinding me with glory. I must 
change my position. I rise. I am transported. 
The glory of the sunshine of the late afternoon 
bathes me, penetrates my very flesh until I am 
transfigxired with it and am all glorious within and 

35 



DOWN THE YEAH 

without. A nimbus is round my head. My face 
shines — I can feel the glow. Filtering down 
through the trees, flecking the grass, burnishing 
the leaves and all that it touches into golden, 
mysterious glory, filling the air with dazzling 
beauty, melting in molten gold on the roadway, 
the summer sun transforms my parsonage back 
yard into the ante-chamber of God's throne-room. 

I am blest above mortals — I see his glory. 

And with God's sunshine streaming over me, 
and God's glory filling my eyes and my soul, I 
kneel beneath the wonderful tree and worship. 



36 



WHEN IT RAINS IN THE COUNTRY 

I HAVE just learned where the old tapestry 
weavers got their delightful, soft, filmy colors. 
There is nothing more beautiful in all art than 
old tapestries, with their mysterious, veiled, remi- 
niscent neutral tints and colors, brilliant yet sub- 
dued. I have long wondered where the old artists 
got their ideas for such color schemes, and have 
speculated much upon the question. I know now, 
for I have been in the country when it rains. 
And the smnmer landscape seen through a sum- 
mer rain is lilvc the rarest and most beautiful 
tapestry. 

The bright colors, so glorious and riotous, of 
flower and tree and sky and billowing grass, 
flashing an hundred lights back to the generous 
sun, grow softer and less brilliant, but no less 
distinct when the gray clouds sweep across the 
sky. The impression made by the change is like 
that of organ music when the organist closes the 
swells and the diapason and trumpet stops are 
silent, while the tender flute and vox humana 
whisper the melody in tones like the evening 
breeze among the i*ushes. You hear each note, 

37 



DOWN THK \K\U 

soft and pure and sweet, and the melody sings — 
but in a whisper. So when the veil swings across 
the sun's beaming face you see each color clear 
and distinct. The melody of tint is not lost, but 
the glow and gleam are quenched and all is soft 
and silky — brilliant without glitter, intense with- 
out gaudiness, deep but rich and delicate, tender 
as memories of childhood. 

And when the shower breaks the shake and 
tremor of the falling rain softens the outlines and 
merges the colors and blends into one beautiful, 
velvety, mysterious, gray-shadowed web field 
and flower and curving road and sky and earth 
and heaven. 

The only way to appreciate a rain in the coun- 
try is to get right out in the midst of it. A city 
rain is different. You need a comfortable chair, if 
you are to enjoy a rain in town, placed with its 
back to the window and as far away as possible, 
and a book or something else to divert your mind 
from the dropping soot-splashes outside. And 
then it is the contrast between the cozy room 
and the dreary out-of-doors that you enjoy. But 
when it rains in the country go out in it. There 
is nothing quite so dismal as wet pavements and 
dripping eaves, with damp lumps of soot splash- 
ing grimily down on your cheek. And there is 
nothing quite so beautiful as wet fields, dripping 

38 



WHEN IT RAINS IN THE COUNTRY 

leaves, and showers of pearls, like largess from 
heaven, falling upon your upturned face. 

A wonderful scene is the country when it rains. 
Everything is green and gray. The fields are a 
wide, flat, smooth, soft, yellow-green sweep. The 
hedges make gray-green borders to the yellow- 
green fields, and you look through the misty 
vista, across the yellow-green field, up beyond the 
gray-green hedges, to the silvery-green trees and 
green-gray sky, for the sky is green-gray when it 
rains in the country — gray with a very per- 
ceptible yet almost intangible tinge of green, 
evanescent and elusive as the caress of a baby. 
The green of earth, of grass, and leaves, and corn- 
blades, and half-ripened grain is caught in the 
strange alchemy of the mist, and each tiny droplet 
appropriates a tinier atom of the verdant glory 
and sends back to the eye its light of mingled 
gray and green; the gray heightened and vivified 
by the green, the green etherealized and sub- 
limed by the gray. It is a soft, warm, misty 
light which filters down through the dainty green- 
gray mist and blends the lines of leaf and branch, 
and edge of field and hedge and roadway, into a 
ravishing scene of soft lines and half -defined forms 
and shivering, dreamlike grace. 

It is a restful sky which infolds the rainy day 
— restful because it is so near and so soft. The 

39 



DOWN THE VEAli 

intense radiance of the sunshine is gone. The 
intoxicating; blue of tlie summer sky is c(3vered 
over. The fleecy clouds and fdmy mist-wreaths 
drop very close to the gray-green earth, and infold 
with indescribable tenderness the soul which 
tnists itself to them, infold it as they infold the 
flowers, the leaves, the grasses, to bear it away as 
they do the green and wrap it to themselves, 
that both cloud and soul may be more beautiful. 
And through the mist the drops of rain slant 
parallel strokes of dull silver. WTiile the wind 
rests the strokes line the vapor>^ background with 
the regularity of a great etching. But when the 
breeze blows, as it does during a rain, with a 
magnificent petulance in egotistical blasts, the 
lines become intricate swirls and mazes of most 
marvelous beauty and grace. The etching moves 
across the vision like a great, wonderful pano- 
rama. It is too broad to see the design, the 
picture. All you can see are the strokes of the 
needle, now thick and close where the Master 
Etcher would have a shadow, now light and wide 
apart where a light comes; now slack, now dashing. 
One moment the strokes arc thinnest threads, and 
so sparsely shot across the background that they 
seem only accidental strokes here and there; the 
next, dashing in flashing diagonal impetuosity till 
all the field is filled with the glitter and nothing 

40 



WHEN IT RAINS IN THE COUNTRY 

is seen but the down-rushing shimmer. And al- 
ways the unspeakable charm of the gray mystery. 

Everything is mystic and strange in the rain, 
but it is the mystery and strangeness of peculiar 
beauty. The familiar brilliance gone, the familiar 
forms of leaf and tree and grass and flower changed 
by the shivering air and the bending weight of 
accumulating drops, the dear trees and shrubs are 
all new and strange. When you look at a tree 
through the rain it seems ghostly and strangely 
silent. The rush of rain drowns the familiar rustle, 
and you can see only the mysterious beckoning of 
the boughs. They wave and bow and nod through 
the gray like the strangely familiar shapes of a 
dream. And they are calling and beckoning in- 
deed — calling the tired soul out into God's re- 
freshing rain, beckoning the weary heart to come 
and be renewed in courage and strength by the 
balm that falls from heaven. And, gradually, as 
the shower progresses, their beckonings become 
more and more labored, they bow lower and yet 
lower, and the leaves droop and droop, unable to 
sustain the gathering weight of pearls. 

The rain is a paradox. The soft, close sky, the 
tender touch of warm drops, the dimness and 
mystery, are restful and quieting, while the 
music of wind and the marching lines of rain 
are inspiring and arousing. To watch those 

41 



DOWN THE YEAR 

slanting echelons marching in time to the fifes of 
wind and drums of falling drops is to find your 
heart beating in unison with them and your soul 
swelling and rising and treading the same measure 
as God's rain — and that measure is the rhythm of 
the heart-beats of the Infinite. 

The gray ranks march off across the field. The 
air is still again and clear, save for the lovely 
green-gray mist. The rain ceases, and the shiver 
and glimmer are gone from the landscape, but 
on every leaf and bud and flower-petal and grass- 
blade hang a thousand pearls, more precious and 
more pure than any ever brought from ocean's 
tinted deeps. The last of the rear guard passes 
and the echelons are out of sight. Then the sun 
comes out again, and the pearls are changed to 
rubies and diamonds and emeralds and topazes 
and turquoise, which flash with a thousand un- 
named fires. The tapestry is gone and colors are 
again brilliant and gleaming. It is like the fair>' 
transformations in the books we read when chil- 
dren. The old romance and mystery are gone 
and we live again in the glittering present. And 
the rose and daisy and grass-blade and leaf are 
more beautiful and brilliant for the rain, and the 
soul is more fresh and pure because it has bathed 
itself in the renewing peace and beauty of the 
showers of God's blessing. 

42 



SUMMER DUSK 

A LITTLE breeze comes out between the hills, 
And blows into the west and cools the blaze; 

The hot, red sunset dims and fades away 

To softer tints, mild blues and pinks and grays. 

The seething thoughts in throbbing brains die 
down; 

Ambition, wealth, the lust of power and praise 
Give place to tender moods, and, like the sky, 

The soul is tranquil in the dusky rays. 



43 



NIGHT RAIN 

It is a glad time when it rains — rain is so won- 
derfial and strange and familiarly unusual. It is 
always the same — the downy mist, the indistinc- 
tiveness, the coolness, and the whispering music; 
and it is always different — for no two raindrops 
are alike in all the world in shape or flash of color 
or line of slant in rushing descent; and no cur- 
tains of mist or fringes of spray or canopies of 
cloud droop and flutter and fold and billow twice 
in just the same forms and folds of grace. 

And when it rains in the night I rise from my 
bed and watch the wonder. But I watch with 
other senses than sight — with ear that strains to 
catch the subtle modulations and evasive melody 
of a raindrop's song fluting through the air; with 
hands that are not nearly sensitive enough to 
comprehend the delicious coolness and moisture, 
or the quick, smashing caress of shattering gems; 
with nostrils that are just learning to know the 
fragrance of flying, splashing crystals; with 
another sense that has no name, by which in 
some way the wonder and mystery and beauty 
of it all come into my soul like the quick-rising, 

45 



DOWX THF YKAI? 

tear-starting emotions that come into it when I 
hear a child pray. 

For sight is useless in the rain at night. God's 
candles are extinguished. The cool, velvet darl: 
swings all around the face upturned toward the 
sky, and the eyes grow large with wonder — but 
no sight is there. The kisses of the raindrops 
seem like the caresses of flying angels, the sounds 
come from out the mystery like spirit music, the 
subtle beauty of it all is breathed in as the flower 
breathes the sunshine. Only when you stand be- 
neath an electric globe, or in the angled glow from 
a window, or when the lightning flashes, do your 
eyes take on value. 

The sky is very close when it rains at night. I 
cannot see it. But it is near, and I know it is 
near as I know when the love of wife and baby is 
close over and about me. I think there must be 
some special faculty by which one may recognize 
beautiful things like love and night sky, even 
when the dark closes his eyes. The night sky is 
indeed close when it rains, and it is a strange, 
mysterious sky. I can understand the skies of 
day: when twilight gray turns to dawny pink, 
and then to blue, when the noon blue spreads 
rich over the world, when it flashes into gold and 
crimson and purple at sunset like the last gorgeous 
apocalypse of beauty before the curtain falls for- 

46 



NIGHT RAIN 

ever on the prophecy, when it bends gray and 
caressing, or is troubled with stormclouds — I can 
understand these skies. And I can understand a 
little of the night sky when I can see it all clear 
and blue and starry, or flooded with the honey- 
sweet light of a summer moon. But when it 
comes near in the dark and rain, so that I can 
almost reach up my hallowed hands and touch the 
very canopy of God's pavilion, yet see not, I can- 
not tell what it means. I only know that in the 
rain it is near — near. 

And this close sky sends down upon my up- 
turned face showers of blessing and refreshing. I 
stand under an electric globe or in the light from 
a window and look up. A veil swings before the 
light, shimmering like pearl-embroidered gauze. 
Modest, subdued pearl-tints intergleam in the 
fabric of the veil, and the light shining through is 
tremulous and tmdulating. Many colors are 
there, but subdued and quiet. I stand in an en- 
chanted circle. I cannot look into the mystery 
beyond it. I cannot leave the circle of the light. 
All that is left me is to stretch out my hands, 
turn my cheeks — to the flying mist. I can see 
only dimly the trees above my head. The familiar 
landscape about me is only a mosaic of shadows, 
some deep, some light; but I am not desolate. 

Out of the circling dimness come floating pearls 

47 



DOWN Tin: VKAK 

and amethysts, as beautiful thoughts float into 
the heart when one Hstens to music, saiHng down 
upon my upturned face like crystals of starlight, 
and smash spattering. I cannot see whence they 
come. I care not. They come to me out of the 
void, out of nothingness, materializing at the 
circle of the light, dashing themselves to pieces on 
my face. Why should I care whence they come? 
Their very existence is for me. I never question 
the origin of the good things sent me out of the 
parts where my eyes penetrate not. The rain- 
drops splash on my face, kind words bathe my 
heart, glances from beloved eyes flash over my 
soul; I am refreshed, blessed in them, and I give 
thanks. 

A lightning-flash while the night rain falls is a 
spectacle of staggering beauty. But you must 
stand with your back to the lightning and look 
out into the great deeps if you would see it in its 
wonder. Perhaps in all the wonderful universe 
there is nothing quite so wonderful as this. Yet 
when you see it first it is like the radiant face of a 
long-gone friend, so familiar is it, yet so new. 
For it is one of God's goodnesses that his world 
is to us like the homeland, and none of its wonders 
make us feel like strangers — all are always new, 
yet all are always familiar. And the lightning- 
limned spectacle of falling night rain is most 

48 



NIGHT RAIN 

wonderful and strange of all. Yet I greet it as my 
own familiar possession; for has not my Father 
hung those crystals there in the dark and flashed 
his fires upon them, and has he not given me eyes 
that I may see? I am not afraid in the dark when 
it rains, for then I truly know God loves me. 
Else why should he make this for me to see, and 
make me eyes which can see it? Mayhap the 
beauty of the spectacle is enhanced by the dark, 
which causes the eyes to expand in readiness to 
receive the maximum of glory. Some things can 
be appreciated only by first passing through a 
preliminary training of deprivation. Because I 
cannot see before, when the flash does come, my 
eyes are opened and all the glory can stream into 
my soul through the dilated pupils. 

The drops splash upon my face and hands in 
sprays of cool blessing. The sighing sound of 
wind in trees mingles with the faint flute whistle 
of the falling globules. My nostrils inhale the 
fragrance of the purified air. My heart swells, 
then trembles, and I feel the tremor, first faint 
and gentle, then more pronounced and more in- 
toxicating, until nerve and heart and soul are all 
bounding and singing in time and time to the 
music of the night. Then — the flash! And all is 
still ! Yes, all is still. The great abyss of light is a 
scene of absolute silence, motionlessness. For the 

49 



DOWN Tin: vi:ai: 

instant of the flash all my being is concentrated 
into my eyes — those eyes so useless imtil the 
great moment — and I hear, feel, smell nothing. 
I only see. And all motion ceases for that in- 
stant. The trees arc bowed, but still. And the 
rain! Across the glow and through the fiery 
infinitude slant wondrous crystal cords, glittering 
like threads of filmiest gossamer, straight and taut 
as the strings of a violin; strings of jewels like 
none ever mined from mountain's heart or brought 
forth by the travail of ocean; great single gems, 
suspended motionless, unconnected and unsup- 
ported; and all flashing and scintillating with 
fires that are unnamed and are never seen on earth 
save when some one goes out into the night and 
stands where God's rain falls and looks with eyes 
prepared by God's darkness. 

I do not know how one can see so much in such 
an infinitesimal space of time. The flash is so 
quick that there is no time to realize the motion 
of the raindrops, falling with the swiftness of 
leagues of acceleration. But this I do know: that 
in that space are all the wonders that a soul may 
see and live. 

They hang there, prisms and pendants and 
many-faceted jewels and ropes and cords of gems 
— shapes that are known not to geometry nor to 
art — and they seem to glow with an iimer luster, 

50 



NIGHT RAIN 

are alive with fires of colors many and strange. 
And even while the flash lasts they change and 
coruscate anew in color more ravishing. Yet 
they move not, they fall not. Little flashing 
sparkles shoot out from each drop and scintillate 
along the cords of fire and send dazzling lines into 
the eyes imtil it seems that the eyeballs must be 
seared. And what matter? To have looked once 
upon this surely is enough for mortal eyes until 
they look upon the glor}^ which is to come. 

And all in a lightning-flash"! Truly, God loveth 
me! 

Darkness again. The crepitation, the crash of 
the thunder's drums, and the winds are again 
sounding their music. But I know now how they 
play. Those taut lines across the blazing welkin 
are the cords of the harp of the universe, and 
through them God's winds march in majestic, 
unearthly harmonies. 

But though the sky seems close, though the 
veil hangs near, and all beyond the veil is chaos, 
still there is a sense of vast expanse beyond the 
veil. The rain on the face, the wind in the ears, 
the cool air in the nostrils, the beauty on the 
heart, all these are ringed within the charmed 
circle. But still I know that far beyond the veil, 
out yonder outside the dark, are the stars and 
God. 

51 



WHEN DAWN COMES ACROSS THE 
FIELDS 

Morning! What a mystery of magic there is 
in the word! It contains all there is of wonder, 
of amazement, of awe at the incomprehensible, of 
beauty and strangeness; for morning means a be- 
ginning, a coming into existence of something that 
was not, and so it means all the wonder and 
majesty of creation and birth. Morning is the 
coming into life of a day, and the beginning of 
life — the life of a flower, a bird, a bee, a boy, a 
picture, a poem, a paradise, a star, a world, a day 
— is such an event as worlds pause to witness, 
and circling stars change orbits for, and men's 
souls gasp at and well over. Morning is all of 
this. Just for a new day to come to the world is 
a great event. Sometimes I wonder when I stand 
bareheaded beneath the cool, deep mystery of 
the dawning welkin why we celebrate holidays at 
all. As if one day were of greater importance 
than another just because something is supposed 
to have taken place on that date in a year so far 
gone that no one knows whether the date is the 
right one or not, or because a certain square in 

53 



DOWN TlIK VKAK 

the calendar is printed in red to indicate that 
that day is devoted to labor or trees or some- 
body's birthday. These things are only hap- 
penings, or, at best, an association that we have 
established for ourselves more or less artificially. 
But in each day as it comes to the world there is 
an essential individuality which makes it different 
from every other day, although, perhaps, no more 
important. A day is a day, and while one day 
differeth from another day in glory, all are 
glorious, and the difference is in kind of glory 
and not in grade. How good God is to keep on 
making days for us to spend! How thankless we 
are not to spend them in joy and praise! We 
spend our money and are thankful we have it to 
spend, even though we have to spend it all for 
plain food and clothing and have none for delica- 
cies and fine raiment. Our days are ours to spend 
too, and we ought to be thankful we have them 
to spend, even when they must be spent in com- 
mon work and there are none left over for so- 
called pleasure. Just to have a day full of hours 
and minutes and seconds is better than to have a 
dollar full of dimes and nickels and pennies. A 
slice cut off from eternity and given to me to 
make it worth while! Truly God has wonderful 
confidence in me to trust me with his eternities 
that way! So the beginning of a day is an event 

54 



WHEN DAWN COMES 

in the universe, and I like to be on hand for the 
first quiver of Hfe that comes with it. 

Morning is a great time, but morning on the 
farm is an apocalypse. Day comes sometimes 
down between brick walls and over belching 
chimneys and heralded by the clangor of factory 
whistles and trolley cars and gongs and beating 
hoofs and rumbling traffic, through the smells of 
toil and struggle. It is wonderful then. But it is 
transcendent out where it comes to the world as 
God left it, across level mead or rolling prairie, 
down along the bosky bed of stream, through 
fringed and graceful branches, with the perfume 
of distillates from grass and clover-bloom and 
fresh-turned soil and growing com and dew- 
steeped leaves and a thousand blossoms. These 
odors hang in the still air of night as the happy 
thoughts hang in the dreams of a child and cause 
him to laugh aloud in his slumber. And when the 
first warmth of morning runs through the world 
like wine through the veins, they quiver and 
fairly scintillate with delicious variations that 
make you think of the varying tones of a violin 
when swept by the bow of a master. Day comes 
to the world in indescribable grace and beauty 
when she can come in her own way across the 
unbounded sky to the unspoiled earth. 

You can feel it coming before you are awake, 

55 



DOWN THE YEAH 

and, no matter how sleepy you are, it has a com- 
pulsion in it that makes eyes struggle through 
drowsiness and torpid limbs stretch themselves 
and reluctant frames tumble out of bed. And 
it is worth while to give up sleep — any amount 
of it — to watch the morning come. 

You feel it first before even the first bird has 
begun to stir and chirp. There is just a something 
that stirs in your heart like the sweet, vague thrill 
of a maiden's kiss, and it tells you morning is 
coming. And you cannot lie still after that. When 
the quiver of it has once struck into your heart 
you may as well give up all notion of sliunber or 
sluggish dozing, for you can no more stay abed 
than a robin can keep still when he finds himself 
swinging on the top of a tree in the sun. It is not 
a call; it does not draw you; it comes into you 
and you go out under the stars just because you 
must. And it is as true a "must" as that which 
blends oxygen and hydrogen into water. You 
have to go to the morning. You feel that you are 
in some way abnormal if you do not. A little 
quiver and tremulous thrill seems to run through 
the universe and you open your eyes in the dark 
and wonder what it is. Did the wind whisper 
through the window? There is no sound of 
rustling leaves. Did a voice sing? There is no 
further note. Did an angel speak and set the 

56 



WHEN DAWN COMES 

world vibrating? It is almost the same. Did a 
child cry or a woman laugh? The darkness is a 
little puzzling, for it seems unfamiliar, a strange 
kind of darkness. There is that in it that makes 
the whole situation peculiar. Then it comes over 
your soul — the morning is coming. That ex- 
plains everything, and at the same time makes 
everything possible, and is the most reasonable 
thing in the world. I cannot tell you how the 
knowledge comes. You wake wondering and in a 
moment it is there. You know it is time for dawn 
and you must hurry to meet it. And the hurrying 
to meet it is so much a part of the whole ex- 
perience that one never stops to debate whether 
to do it. When you know morning is at the 
window you just go and meet it. Why? I do not 
know and I do not want to know. When you 
hold a baby in your arms you always kiss it. 
Why? I do not know, but it is just that way 
about morning. You know it is coming and you 
go to meet it. 

It is always like that, but one summer I saw 
the day come in such wonderful beauty that the 
memory of it will stay in my heart and make life 
sweeter until I die. I always think of that day as 
to-day. It is to-day for me and I am out where 
God's good world is clean and sweet and the sun 
can find it without getting lost in the smoke. 

57 



I)()W\ THK YEAR 

Darkness leaves the world early in August, and 
the stars are very shy visitors and spend only a 
little time with us. Yet early as the darkness 
leaves, and earl\' as the stars glimmer away, I 
rise from my bed while the stars still twinkle. 
The moon has gone down early in the night and 
there is not yet a hint of sunlight across the sky. 
The tremor of the dawn strikes me — you know 
it comes long before there is any light so you can 
be ready for the spectacle — and I rise beneath the 
stars. I wonder why we always look at the sky 
first when the night's slumber ends. I like to 
keep my window open so the first spectacle that 
greets my opening eyes is the majestic expanse of 
God's heaven. I believe there must be something 
of the divine even in the worst of us, for I have 
never seen the man who did not turn his face in 
the first waking moments toward the sky. The 
incomparable sweep and arch of the majestic 
dome seems the only satisfaction for the gaze- 
search of the awakening human personality. So 
I look first of all at the sk3\ No, I will not tell 
what I see; I cannot. It is blue, but you have 
never seen a blue like it unless you have seen the 
sky as I see it now, so you will know nothing of 
it if I say it is blue. And can I say it is blue? I 
do not know whether that ineffable, heart- 
thrilling tone is blue or grav or green or all three. 

58 ' 




THE INCOMPARABLE S\\ EEl' A Nit ARCH OF THE MAJESTIC DOME 



WHEN DAWN COMES 

You must look. There is no light in all the world 
except what comes from the stars. It is dark — 
night, but morning is near. The stars are very 
bright, but there is just a suspicion of weariness 
in their brilliance, as if they were anxious to end 
their watch. They are not faint nor dim, it is 
only a suggestion of flagging like you see in a 
bride's eyes when she has poured out her heart's 
love and would love more if she could. They 
seem sorry they can shine no brighter, yet glad 
they have shone so brightly through the night. 
Last night they were full and rich and scintillating. 
That is the starlight we know so well, the star- 
light of the evening. But the starlight of the 
morning is not like that; it has this strange touch 
of weariness, just enough to make it different and 
a little strange. This early morning time is a 
strange time and the stars partake of the beautiful 
strangeness. 

It is strange because it is a kind of interim in 
nature's processes; one thing is finished and 
another about to be begun. It is not yesterday 
and it is not to-day — yet. It is the between- 
time, the interval when a finished piece of work 
is folded up and put away and the dear world- 
mother pauses a moment with her hand on the 
knob before she opens the drawer and takes out 
another. And the tired stars look down, waiting 

59 



DOWN THE YKAR 

for the new day to be born. They will not go away 
no matter how tired they are until that miracle 
comes to pass. Even the circling stars wait on 
that — it is so wonderful. 

We are such silly mortals that we think we must 
be constantly rushing from one thing to another, 
and if by chance we lay down one task and 
another is not reached at the first grab, we think 
we are disgraced by idleness or, what is worse, 
are losing something by it. And it is the same 
way with our pleasures as with our work; we 
must be always at it whether working or playing, 
and we count the idle time as empty time. It is 
not so. It is the idle time that God uses to do 
his most wonderful things for us and to make his 
presence felt. He cannot get a word in edgewise 
when one is plunging along through the world at 
top speed and with eyes and thoughts racing 
ahead to what is to be done next. We do not 
live too fast; the faster we live the better, for 
then we shall be the better equipped for eternity 
when we come to enter it. But we do live too 
constantly. We take no breathing times, mark 
no division lines. God's universe is a great pat- 
tern, it is true, but each element of the mosaic is 
complete in itself, and even when lifted away 
from the other parts shows the mind of the Great 
Artist. God's work is so different from man's in 

60 



WHEN DAWN COMES 

this! It requires the whole picture to convey the 
message of an artist of earth. And our lives are 
like human pictures; their elements are all fused 
together, and each day grows out of the one 
before it and into the one after it so that if we are 
not careful we just have a mess instead of what 
we fondly call a system. If we would but do as 
God does, as God's nature does, finish each day 
and lay it away and begin a new one each morn- 
ing, we should succeed in doing something much 
more like the things God does. We need the 
interims, the markings-off, as truly as we need 
the activity and the perseverance. 

And this period just before the dawn is the 
marking-off time. It is the time when one day 
is done and another has not yet begun. Nature 
is getting ready for something new. She is clear- 
ing her mind from the vexations and kinks that 
yesterday caused her and setting her thoughts and 
ideas and loves all in order for a fresh piece of 
activity. The old things are passed away. 

A new day is not a continuation of the old one. 
God does better for his world than to drag out the 
toil and weariness and exasperation and sorrow 
and depression that mark the fall of the days, 
out across the blessed night and into the light 
again, and call it a new day. When the black 
curtain falls it is to shut away forever the day that 

6i 



DOWN mK vi:\i^ 

is done. And when it rises in the glory of the 
moniing the day that comes forth is one that 
never was before on land or sea, and you have 
opportunities and responsibilities and kindnesses 
and sunshine and breezes that you never had 
before. You may spend it in the same field. 
What of that? You may do the same kind of 
task. No matter. It is a new task. When the 
sunrays of evening fall across the gorgeous west 
and gild the good old work-a-day world into a 
scene of wonder, the gilding and the glory and the 
wonder are absorbed by the brown old earth, 
and that is why she is becoming every day more 
beautiful. And some souls absorb, if we will, 
much of God and heaven and become every day 
more glorious. But the sunbeams of yesterday 
are gone; they have sunk into the fiber of the 
earth, and these that presently will come slanting 
out of the east are new ones. "New every morn- 
ing is thy love, O God," and new are the pencils 
of light with which thou dost write its message. 

Yesterday is all gone; there is not a thing in the 
dim world to remind one of it. Evcr\' whisper of 
the breeze, every rustle of the leaves, ever>' 
twinkle of the stars is all about the day that is 
coming, not the one that is gone. And under the 
tired, waiting stars the fresh, waiting world lies 
expectant. 

62 



WHEN DAWN COMES 

The air holds a peculiar sweetness, a sweetness 
that is as evanescent as the smile in a child's eyes 
when she does not know you are looking at her. 
There is a cool, delicate fragrance that comes to 
you out of the dark and starts the nostrils to 
quivering and the brain and heart to reeling in a 
celestial intoxication. Yesterday afternoon, when 
the sun was hot, the flowers and grass gave off a 
musty, dusty smell that made you choke a little. 
When the dew came down upon them later — 
when the sun had set, but -the heat was still in 
their sap — and began to cool them and liberate in 
that wonderful chemistry the more delicate odors 
to mingle with the heavier ones, they gave off a 
soft, delicious, rare, pungent, stimulating per- 
fume. The heat of the day brings out the huskier 
virtues of flowers and men. When the dark and 
dew of the rest-times soften their tissues, that is 
when they yield up their sweeter and loftier and 
more ethereal selves in noble thoughts or loving 
acts. O soul, think not the dark time is a sad 
time; it is the sweet-time of life, and shame upon 
the one who would sneer at or belittle the power 
and value of the sweets. I wonder if this would 
not be a better world if we would only give more 
attention to getting ourselves under the influence 
of the softening and etherealizing dews and cool- 
ness of a little more thought for home, a little 

63 



DOWN THE YEAH 

closer looking after the "unprofitable" things, a 
little longer time for prayer, and more time spent 
with birds and flowers and wife and children. 
God gives to the flowers a season of such softening 
and refreshing every night. He will do it for the 
souls of man if they will let him, and will hold up 
their faces to the dew of his quiet blessings like 
the flowers do. 

But in the waiting time before the dawn the 
harshness and heaviness have all gone out of the 
perfume and only the more delicate and lighter 
scents are left. And through the cool hours a 
thousand new sweetnesses have distilled from 
modest flowers hidden among the long brookside 
grasses and in the alders, from corn-blade and 
new-turned earth and kine-tramplcd grass, and 
blossoms undetected except by the searching cool 
of the night. For, verily, the long cool brings out 
the perfume of flowers that would otherwise be 
unknown. And these mingle and blend with the 
odors of the afternoon and ripen and grow mellow 
and inexpressibly delicious as the night passes 
until, when the dawn-thrill shivers down to earth, 
it can find an atmosphere of the right composi- 
tion to respond to it and catch it up and trcnible 
with it, as the prisoned air in an organ pipe catches 
and trembles with the flutter of a breath, until all 
the world is trembling and quivering too with the 

64 



WHEN DAWN COMES 

knowledge that the morning comes. It is a sweet, 
cool air that intoxicates but does not bewilder, 
rather that wakes to perfect clarity and activity- 
all the sleep-dulled faculties and stirs into action 
new ones that you never dreamed you possessed. 
The magic of the essences which hang in the air 
makes the hour before the dawn the best time of 
one's whole life, for they arouse strong and noble 
feelings and stimulate clear thought and inspire 
right emotions. 

It is not an insipid, flaccid atmosphere; it is 
sweet and soft and of an alluringly elusive frag- 
rance, but it is tense and tingling with expectancy. 
From the blinking stars down to the uplifted 
faces of the flowers that you can barely see at 
your feet everything is expectant. For has not 
the thrill from the sky shot through the world? 
And my nerves grow taut like harpstrings, and my 
eyes open wide in the gloom, and my feet seem 
winged, and my hands stretch out, and my soul 
holds herself poised, for the thrill is in me too. 
The universe is full of expectation. Surely, the 
morning must be just beyond the little hill there! 
It could hide nowhere else, for all about the broad 
bosom of the earth lies exposed like the breast of 
a tawny mother who would gather to it all who 
wander. No, that hill is in the west. Morning 
does not come up the west; evening went down 

65 



DOWN THE YEAR 

that path, and in this magic world the paths arc 
passable in only one direction. Where is the 
morning? Where? We look for it — the stars, 
the flowers, the trees, the grass, the leaves, the 
fields, the road, and I. Where is it? 

Is there a breeze? Who can say? Somehow, I 
think there must be. I can barely see the least 
movement among the leaves at the tops of the 
trees. There must be a wind. How would they 
move else? I listen. I can hear no wliisper or 
murmur. I reach out a wetted finger. It grows 
cold. I turn a cheek and for an instant send all 
my thought and mind to that cheek. Yes, I can 
feel it — just a touch, a brush of a zephyr, so light 
that I would never have felt it at all but for con- 
centrated attention, just the softest touch like a 
fairy's caress. There is a wind, but it is an ex- 
pectant wind, like cvcr>'thing else is expectant. 
It is a silent wind. It moves, but sings not; it 
flies, but murmurs not. It is poised waiting. 

Then, without knowing how it came there or 
when, I see a veil over the faces of the stars, and 
their winking eyes grow a little dim. Yet it is 
like no veil I have ever seen, for though the stars 
through it are dim and a little ghostly, it does 
not seem to obscure them. Rather it is as if 
some great hand had swept across the gemmed 
sky and brushed the diamond-dust from the sur- 

66 



WHEN DAWN COMES 

faces of the stars as one might brush the bloom 
from a cluster of grapes. There is something 
floating between earth and stars that seems of a 
substance with the stars themselves, as if the 
bright bloom brushed from them filled the air. 
Their light is veiled in light. A kind of glimmer 
is under the stars, a lower stratum of light, a 
silvery, wispish, vapory light, through which the 
stars still twinkle, but more slowly and less 
brilliantly. Have you not lain on your back 
under a June-day sky and. watched the clouds? 
You know how you will see a mass of clouds 
shaping and piling and moving against the blue, 
big and massy and emphatic, and as you watch 
them a thin, shreddy, smoky cloud will sail below 
them, moving in the opposite direction. The lower 
cloud does not hide the higher solid clouds, but 
it detracts from the majesty and beauty of their 
big, white, bold form. This light is like that. It 
is a thin, almost impalpable light, but the stars 
and sky recede behind it and grow vague and in- 
definite. And that wispy light hangs there, and 
will grow no stronger nor will it go away. And 
we wait for the morning — the flowers and trees 
and dimming stars, and I. 

It is dark down here on the earth; that filmy 
light floats in the sky just beneath the stars. 
You can see it, but it illuminates nothing below. 

67 



DOWN TIIK M:AI{ 

It is like the dreams and visions of a mystic, 
beautiful and lofty, but it docs not make the foot- 
path any plainer nor the colors of the flowers any 
more distinct. It only serves to make one feel 
how very far beneath heaven he is. So my 
farmer host carries his lantern when he goes to the 
barnyard. The cows are waiting to be milked, 
and he sets the lantern on the top of a post, where 
its red, bleared eye glimmers through the dark 
like the malefic glare of some prowling gnome of 
the night who has got caught in a vine or on a 
thorn and cannot get back home to his cave in 
time to escape the sunshine. What an abnor- 
mality that lantern seems in the fragrant hush 
and dusky stillness! Yet we cannot see to get 
about without it. I wonder if we shall ever get 
to understand God's world well enough to get 
about easily in it at all times and in whatever one 
of its wonderful phases it may be, without arti- 
ficial help. Here am I, and here my farmer friend 
under the veiled sky and the stars, our very souls 
tingling and quivering with the expectation of the 
day, but we cannot get about; we are helpless in 
it all. And I wonder if it will be that way when 
we go beyond the light- veil. Shall we always be 
reaching back to the world for something to help 
us? And I wonder if we can ever learn to get 
about God's world and God's heaven unhelped. 

68 



WHEN DAWN COMES 

That lantern looks out of place in this ante- 
dawning time. Its light is not the kind of light 
that harmonizes with the light in the sky, nor is it 
the kind of light that dispels the gloom on the 
grass. From where I stand I cannot see why there 
should be such a thing in the world as that lan- 
tern. It is just a red, flaring, ugly flame that has 
no business there. It makes me think of the mis- 
chief done by an impish child who tears a piece of 
tapestry. that we could only make our way 
through life without doing violence to so many 
things that are tender and dainty and beautiful and 
evanescent like the morning minutes! Nothing 
could be more incongruous than the light of that 
lantern under the light of the stars, yet I must 
have it or I will come to grief as sure as I try 
to step. I despise and detest a lot of ugly things 
that have, somehow, identified themselves with 
this thing I call me, but I have allowed a twist 
to become permanent in me that makes it impos- 
sible for me to get on without them. 

Yet the red flame of the lantern is a wonderful 
comfort, after all, because it is so intensely and 
emphatically of humanity; it shows the presence 
of hiiman companionship. There are many won- 
derful places one may visit and many great ex- 
periences to pass through. And in them all is 
much of glory and exaltation of spirit. But I 

69 



DOWN THK \K\\{ 

like to know that folks iirc near too. And this 
waiting world is a world that quivers with the 
extraordinary. The strange light-film across the 
sky, the tired stars, the silent wind, the great 
masses of the trees, the unfamiliar fragrance, the 
vague thrilling whisper that is in it all — they are 
all extraordinary. And a stupid man such as I, 
in the midst of it, docs not feel at home. It is a 
wonderful privilege God is giving me, but my 
heart cannot endure it well. I would not miss it, 
and I thank God for it, but I thank him too for 
the lantern on the fence which is so intensely 
human in this world of the transcendent. 

A flicker of phosphorescence comes into the air 
high above the trees. It is not light, it is not a 
gleam or a ray. It is just a little, half-unseen 
lighting up, as if the merest spray of light had 
sprinkled the dome. You cannot call it light; it 
is only a promise of light. It is pale and cold and 
vague; but by it, as my eyes grow accustomed to 
it and to the gloom, I can make out the foniis of 
the living creatures all about me. All silent and 
motionless, they are Hke the phantasms of a 
tiream. They seem not really to exist at all. The 
utter silence and motionlessness make them seem 
uncanny. When the sound and movement are 
gone, what is it to live? These animals live; I 
know that; but the sound and movement are 

70 



WHEN DAWN COMES 

wanting, and I cannot think they are the familiar 
friends of yesterday. There is a peculiar awe- 
someness about the complete relaxation and in- 
ertness of a sleeping dumb animal. The great 
bulk and ungainly postures that the most graceful 
of them assume in sleep seem grotesque and 
strange with a kind of fearsome strangeness. 

A flock of ducks rests on the ground looking, 
in the dimness, like the last of a belated snow- 
drift. They sit fiat and close together and their 
heads are muffled in their feathers so there is 
only a fluff of white. And coming upon it in this 
mysterious half-light, one is startled. And you 
can walk right in among them and they will not 
stir. One or two may utter a little, drowsy, 
protesting note, not a quack nor a chirrup, but a 
note that means "Let me alone a little while 
longer," and can have no other interpretation. 
But you can even stir them with your foot and 
not greatly disturb them if you are gentle about 
it. You cannot thrill them into life; it is the day 
that must do that. True, you can by rough hand- 
ling and outrage rouse them to noisy, frantic, in- 
sane commotion, a panic that is no more like life 
than delirium is like sleep. But you cannot bring 
them awake in the peaceful, happy, quacking, 
happy-go-lucky way that makes them such whim- 
sically delightful creatures. You cannot hurry 

71 



DOWN THE YEA1{ 

nor improve upon God's way. When he means 
for those ducks to awake, they will awake in 
peace and in the ecstasy of Hfc. If you try to 
wake them too soon, you make of them a clamor- 
ing, crazy, frightened, frantic something that was 
never meant to be seen in a good world. God 
means his creatures to be happy in his world, 
and ducks and men may be so if they will only 
yield to the spell of it, and not interfere with one 
another. This is my part of the morning; the 
white ducks will have their part presently. 

Horses and cattle loom gigantic in the morning 
twilight. The cows lie peacefully, some just be- 
ginning to move their heads a little, while the 
horses, for the most part, sleep standing. The 
pigs lie motionless in the sty. And the cold, 
vapory light in the sky shows them to me, but 
dimly, O dimly. 

Now changes come so fast and so many of them 
at once that the eye cannot follow them all nor 
tongue tell of them. 

Gradually the sky lightens overhead. It does 
not grow brilliant, nor does it brighten. The 
sky itself becomes more light. It is a strange 
and wonderful spectacle to watch the sky lighten 
this way. It is a soft, subdued light that seems 
to shine from the sky itself. It is not the strong, 
big light the sun throws against the sky at mid- 
72 



WHEN DAWN COMES 

day, nor yet the tender glow that he sends up 
after his disk is hidden behind the western edge 
of the world. It is a white, a gray light rather, 
frosty and cool and diffused, as if behind the sky 
an angel were kindling the pure fires of heaven 
and they shone through a great ground-glass 
globe. You can see the stars disappear into the 
great screen of the heavens like violets closing 
their petals and hiding in the grass. You can see 
the cool, gray light growing stronger and stronger, 
not in pulses and waves, but in a steady, smooth, 
deliberate surge like the settling down of the 
white frost when the first chill nights come in the 
autumn. And it is still gray; there is no color in 
it. It whitens the dark sky and the stars grow 
very dim indeed. It sifts downward and the 
familiar things about me begin to take shape. 
The ineffable tracery of twigs and leaves begins 
to stand out; grass-blades can be distinguished; a 
flower can be descried here and there; the beasts 
take on a familiar look; and you can see what 
the ducks are on the ground. 

And that lantern! Over there on the fence it 
still bums, but you can barely see the light of it, 
and it is not an anomaly any more; it is just a 
joke. You want to laugh at the absurdity of that 
foolish lantern trying to shine in this light and 
this world. It is the queerest thing imaginable. 

73 



DOWN THE \K\\i 

With the intensifying of the sky-Hght a Httlehfe 
comes into being. There is a restlessness that 
one can feel and know yet cannot tell among the 
creatures. Small, indescribable sounds come from 
the pigsty, the barnyard, the ducks, and from out 
of the shrouded mystery that surrounds the little 
circle of your vision. The night insects have 
hushed long since, and faintly, just audible — 
sometimes a whisper that is not audible, but only 
makes a little quiver in the ear — out of the bright- 
ening dusk come the sounds of preparation for 
morning. Now is when a new note is added to 
the chord, a new life to the cosmos: the birds 
begin to stir, and from tree and bush and shelter- 
ing vine, from eave and roof and hiding grass, 
little rustlings are heard, the tiny sound of tin}' 
feathers being ruffled and smoothed, the .small 
flutter of small bodies stirring. Now and then a 
murmur or a chirrup falls through the stir like 
the drip of the first raindrop through the flurry 
of the wind. The first murmur from the birds 
on a summer morning is a note of celestial music. 
For, verily, in the gloamy light, when the birds 
themselves are hid, it seems dropped straight 
from heaven. 

First there are a thousand little movements. A 
cow swings her head, or perhaps comes awkwardly 
to her feet. A horse takes a step or two. A 

74 



WHEN DAWN COMES 

chicken stirs and flutters on the perch. The ducks 
put up ridiculous heads with fascinating blank 
faces, and one or two get up and waddle about a 
little to tell the others to get ready for the day. 
The hogs grunt softly and lazily. Then the cattle 
step about with more briskness, but still silently. 
The horses walk up to the racks of hay. The little 
movements grow rapidly wider and quicker. You 
hear the crunching of the horses' teeth as they 
begin to munch. Gradually the animal company 
comes to full life. Chickens "and ducks leave the 
roosting places and begin to vocalize. Hogs stand 
up. The barnyard becomes animated. It is in all 
flowing blood now, the thrill of the morning, and 
bird and beast and fowl and porker, eager hen 
and funny duck, stolid plow-horse and patient 
cow, silly sheep and wise dog, all respond to it, 
and the full tide of life is flowing again. In a 
pause the voice of the cock rings out from his 
post of importance in the midst of his harem 
and the approach of the morning is officially 
announced. 

What an old humbug that rooster is! He 
struts about among his wives, his head high and 
plimiage ruffled, and emits his raucous hail with 
an air that says plainly that he considers the 
whole affair a great bore, but really the morning 
could not come to earth properly at all without 

75 



DU\\\ Tin: YKAK 

him, so he will be on hand, no matter how dis- 
tasteful it is. So he struts about among the hens, 
and no one else pays any attention to him, and 
the hens themselves take him for granted. He is 
ven- great in his own estimation, and he struts 
and stalks around with much pomposity — among 
the hens. He can be great there. The hens are 
too busy to pay mucli attention to him, for they 
go to work as soon as they can see, and none of 
the other living creatures will bother with him. He 
acts as if all this were the isolation of dignity and 
has a most delightful time enjoying it. He is 
like some men I know. 

Over in the east a wonderful thing is taking 
place. I see at first a sky, faintly tinted with the 
cool, vague, negative tints that belong to the sea. 
Did you ever think how much alike all big things 
arc? Here is an infinite morning sky, as wide and 
deep as the ocean, showing the very tints of the 
ocean. And when you look across the sea's great 
expanse in the early light it shows the tints of the 
eastern sky, and you cannot tell where sea stops 
and sky begins; they must be only parts of one 
great infinity, after all; and the .ship that sails 
the ocean might sail right on out into the infinite 
sky if only we knew enough about such things. 
And the big, deep hearts of strong, tender men are 
like the heart of God, and we might know God 

76 



WHEN DAWN COMES 

better if we could only get better acquainted 
among ourselves. 

That eastern sky shows the cool, pale blues and 
grays and mother-of-pearl tints. And there are 
some tints there that have no name. But they 
are as beautiful as the changes on a maiden's 
cheek where the blue veins show delicately under 
the white skin and the blush of the wild rose ebbs 
and flows over it as her heart beats with thoughts 
too pure to be spoken. 

Over toward the zenith the pale, sweet coloring 
spreads until the tenuous gray light in the great 
dome is shot through with lines and sparks that 
scintillate and coruscate. And — where are the 
stars? Did you see them go? They are gone — I 
do not know when or where or how. And I wanted 
to say good-by to them. From the east the color 
mounts and spreads and grows brilliant. The 
few tints multiply until the sky is a medley of 
color, yet still the subdued and modest tints. 
But with every passing minute new beauties are 
added and new combinations come to pass and 
each minute's spectacle is more wonderful than 
the one before, and each new tint a little more 
heavenly. 

And as the minutes pass the cool tints change 
to glows. The sweet, opalescent pink deepens and 
turns to a red as deep as the red in the heart of a 

11 



i)()V\\ Tin: \\:\n 

niby. The cool, greenish, grayish blue leaps al- 
most suddenly into life and sparkles and glistens 
like crushed sapphires. The red merges into a 
glowing yellow, the blue into a gorgeous purple, 
and flaming orange, like the wings of a million 
orioles, flashes across the superb spectacle. Be- 
fore my eyes the east changes from subdueti 
color to flaming gorgeousness ; from sweet, cool 
cjuiet to glowing, pulsing, blazing life. And out 
of the glow, up across the arching dome, and 
level across the waking earth, through the misty 
air, speed beams and rays of a grateful wannth. 
It falls upon the stirring creatures and the stir 
becomes ecstasy and the lambs and young colts 
kick up their heels for vcr}^ joy of life and the 
morning, while birds burst into melody. The 
glow and glory sink down through eye and touch 
into the soul so that it glows with the morning; 
they strike upon the night-cooled earth, and she 
responds in rapture; they penetrate the leaves to 
where the birds wait, and they sing; they search 
out the winged creatures among the grass and 
flowers, and their himi and buzz is added to the 
symphony. 

The morning cometh apace. 

Shafts of light radiate fan-wise across the sky 
from a spot on the eastern horizon. There is no 
sight of sun yet. All the light that is on the earth 

78 



WHEN DAWN COMES 

— gorgeous and magnificent though it is — is first 
thrown into the sky and falls back to where I 
stand. Up they spring in tremendous lines of 
awful stretch and sweep and of color unseen save 
when the heralds of the sky thus unfurl their 
banners before the coming of the king of day. 
White mists become visible in the low places, and 
melt away even as I catch sight of them. 

Then a pause. The deep colors grow slowly, 
slowly deeper ; the sky seems to recede in the east 
so that I look into an infinity of color. Then a 
new transformation. With marvelous rapidity 
that deep, deep, unfathomably deep and wide pit 
of color changes from color to fire. The colors 
leap and dance and wind themselves like gay 
banners. They are melted and blend together 
and seethe and bubble and give off vapors as in- 
describably magnificent as themselves. The sky 
in the east in an instant becomes blazing, flaming, 
hot, bright, intolerable. And at the change all 
the bird-notes are loosed, and melody mingles 
with magnificence, and movement is full and free 
and joyous. The full tide of life is at the flood. 
Long, level lances of light pierce my eyeballs as I 
gaze fascinated into the unearthly beauty of the 
east. 

Then the sun lifts above the rim of the world, 
and in the glory a new day is bom. 

79 



JUST BEFORE THE LEAVES TURN 

Just before the leaves turn there are some very 
fine things to see if you will go rambling through 
the browning grass and under the trees that are 
getting ready for the fall carnival. But you must 
get away from the beaten roads if you want to see 
them all. You can find some of them along the 
ways; and that is one beautiful thing about the 
big out-of-doors — it cannot contain itself. It is so 
full of beauty and the kind of wonder that lifts up 
souls that it must come crowding right through 
the woods, across the fields, up to the very road- 
ways where we walk, and even to our doorsteps. 
Part of it you cannot miss. Neither can you find 
all of it by keeping to the beaten ways. The 
out-of-doors has to crowd into stupid humanity 
some way — or it seems as if it must — in order 
that it be not a failure. I often stop to wonder 
why God does fling his beautiful things right be- 
fore us so lavishly when we so often just stare 
stupidly and wonder what it is all about. But 
the best of the outdoors must be sought for like 
any other best. The best is the best because it is 
not forced upon us and so made cheap. I do not 
mean that anything you will find in the outdoor 

8i 



DOWN TllK VEAK 

world is poor or cheap; it is all too good for such 
as we. But the part that is crowded upon us is 
only a hint of what is waiting if we will go to look 
for it. 

And a good time to go is just before the leaves 
turn. And the leaves are about to turn— now. 
So come and bring your eyes, and we will climb 
over the fence, and get out of the powdery dust 
into the grass that is getting just a little rusty, 
and walk down the aisles under the Gothic arches 
of God's most bt^loved of temples. 

I do not wonder that the barbarous old Goths 
modeled the arches of their buildings by the 
springing and meeting boughs of trees. Some say 
they did it because they did not know how to do 
it any other way, that they were too stupid to 
originate a form, and so just imitated the lines 
they saw when they looked down the vistas of 
their beloved forests. I do not believe it. I do 
not care if they were wantonly destructive and 
cruel — I rather believe that is a libel, anyway — 
they knew that nowhere in all the world could be 
found a form of greater grace for their houses, 
and they were too wise to try to improve upon 
what was already perfect. I am glad too that 
convention still retains that form for churches; it 
is God's own form and ought to be used in his 
house. 

82 



JUST BEFORE THE LEAVES TURN 

Stand here just a minute before we enter the 
cathedral. Let us look at it outside before we 
explore the beauties of the interior. Did you 
expect to find a gorgeous, flaming, glowing world 
because I said it is autumn? You will find that if 
you will come back here in a few weeks, but now 
the world is rather neutral and quiet of beauty. 
The leaves are still green, although the richness 
and gleam of the summer are somewhat mellowed 
and the grass has only a tiny flicker of a rustle in 
it, and only the faintest hint that after a while it 
will be brown. It is long and soft and rich under 
the feet and just a little crisp, and it waves when 
the wind blows. And the wind in it talks — it 
does not sing in the early autumn grass — it talks 
in a sibilant tone that makes you think that 
autimin elves must be getting together some- 
where down in the green depths of it to make 
plans for the mad frolic that is coming when the 
Frost Sprite comes to hold carnival for a little 
\vhile. Are you disappointed? No, not disap- 
pointed; no one can be disappointed in the good 
outdoors. But mayhap a little surprised. Au- 
tumn is the gorgeous time, and this is a world 
neutral and negative rather than colorful and 
pronounced. In the large it is quiet and modest, 
but in the small things, the details of the architec- 
ture, the beauty of the cathedral where we wor- 

83 



DOWN Tin: m:ak 

ship to-day is marvelously clear and positive. 
When we were here in the full throb and pulsinj; 
glow of summer the radiance was dazzling, be- 
wildering, distracting. The color and warmth and 
brilliance all combined in a glory that smote the 
eyeballs with blindness and fell upon the heart in 
waves of burning, confusing ecstasy. That is all 
gone now, and in the softer radiance the eye may 
pick out the elements of the picture and revel in 
the beauty of leaf or twig or hazy sky or purpling 
grape or downy thistle. It all stands free now, 
what before was merged into the intense life of 
the glow-time of the year. 

Then we looked at a broad, bright, full-colored 
painting. And we will come back here again and 
look upon another equally brilliant. But now the 
Great Artist has put out a sepia etching for us to 
glory in. 

So now we cross the open field where the late 
vegetables, disheveled and burdened, still stand in 
long rows, like children waiting to be dismissed 
from school, lessons all learned and dog-eared 
books packed up. The dying vines reveal the 
rotund forms of the pumpkins and squashes lying 
on the ground. Sprawled over the pulTy earth, 
the gray-brown vines trace a lace pattern that is 
intricate and beautiful. How our feet sink into the 
soft, moist soil! Last spring — WTiy is it that the 

84 



JUST BEl ORE THE LEAVES TURN 

autumn-time always puts one to thinking of the 
times that have gone? There is a delightful soft- 
ness in this soil so that it seems one could walk 
through it all day and not tire; there is a witching 
beauty in the soft gray tracery of the dead vines 
over the sweet brown earth; there is richness and 
lusciousness of color in the pumpkins; there is 
spice in the sweet, clear air; and in the whole 
world is the wonder of the approaching glory. 
Sm'ely, this time is full enough. ■ But — last spring 
some one dug mightily and toiled patiently to 
bring this field to the mellowness that is so de- 
lightful to our feet to-day, and the memory of his 
toil is in the very soil we tread. Let us stop a 
moment to pa}^ our tribute of appreciation to 
whomsoever it was. No matter if he did not 
know us and was digging only in order to raise 
squashes and pumpkins. Perhaps he had visions 
of golden yellow pies or creamy and sweet baked 
squashes steaming on his table. No matter if 
that is all he thought of. He worked, and we 
tread the soft soil he made and are glad. A good 
deal that comes to us comes that way, it seems to 
me. He never thought of us ; we thought no more 
of him; he just worked. Other men have labored 
and we have entered into their labors. I think he 
would be as glad — if he knew about it — for our 
satisfaction in his springy field as for his golden 

85 



DOWN Tin: ViOAll 

pumpkins. Whoever he was, he did his work 
well and so did more than he supposed. It is 
always so; doing your work well brings bigger 
results than you think. And I am glad for the 
soft footing that I had nothing to do with pre- 
paring. I am glad for a lot of other things that 
make this world so much like heaven and that I 
do nothing of myself to merit or obtain: for the 
blue sky overhead, the sweet summer wind, the 
moonlight on water, a baby's smile, prayer, the 
love of wife and children, the deep peace of 
the twilight, white clouds in a summer sky, 
friends, the respect and love of vSome men, the 
deep joy of life, God's care and the love of the 
Christ. I should be a spiritual bankrupt if I had 
to make my own fortune and inherit nothing. 
But so much is given me which I could never 
earn that I feel that I ought to step very softly 
in this mellow soil and be very thankful ; and that 
I ought to be very earnest about doing the small 
work I can do — doing it well enough to spread out 
just a little beyond what I can see and make an 
easier footing for some one after I have gathered 
my squashes. 

Our thanks to the man who dug last spring. 

Across there the wire fence sags under the 
weight of a mighty squash which hangs suspended 
grotesquely by its crooked neck from the very 

86 



JUST BEFORE THE LEAVES TURN 

top. It looks like some fantastic bird without 
feet or wings, hanging by its bill from the wire. 
Last summer — again the past time! But how 
much there is to make us think of it! Somehow, 
everything that is complete and ripe in itself 
speaks of days, many or few, and seasons, rigorous 
or mild, which have gone into its making, whether 
it be a squash or a tree or a berry, a poem, a pic- 
ture, or a man. Last summer, then, while there 
was nothing for the vine to lift but a gorgeous 
yellow blossom, it climbed that woven trellis of 
wire and flaunted the big yellow bloom in the 
very face of the sun. It was young then and 
strong, and the yellow bloom was very beautiful. 
And that is like a young man in the glory of his 
youth, with the bloom of his ideals and ambitions 
upon him. He is strong and the climbing is easy, 
for the flowers are very beautiful. Now the vine 
is dr}'' and ragged and growing friable and brittle. 
x-\nd that is like the young man become old when 
his ideals have fruited and come to maturity and 
are more majestic than the flowers. He can main- 
tain the heavy responsibilities, as the vine holds 
the fruit, because he climbed as high as he coxild 
while nothing but the ideals and ambitions of 
youth were to be lifted and the full tide of life 
was in his veins. There are some vines lying 
with their fruit on the ground; they failed to 

87 



DOWN Tin: m:ai{ 

climb wliile they could. And there are men who 
must ripen the fruit of their lives in humiliation 
and obscurity because they failed to lift them- 
selves when they might. I wisli I had climbed 
higher when my soul was in the flower. 

These vines that are under our feet in the soft 
earth are gray, with brown tones shot through it 
that makes them look like a great filigree of dull 
silver a little tarnished and the more beautiful 
and valuable because of the taniish. I do not 
like things too new and bright, they seem not to 
have anything to do with people; they are so 
perfect in newness and polish that they stand 
apart from you. But when the spots from finger 
marks have begun to show, and the little nicks 
and scratches that tell of use cobweb the fair 
surface, then they seem real and worth something. 
Sometimes I wonder if the tarnished spots and 
broken places we find in ourselves as the years 
march to the autumn time are not the marks that 
come from our being associated with the use and 
enjoyment of the Great Personality in whose 
crown the souls of his people shall shine as gems. 
For "they shall be his when he cometh to make 
up his jewels." 

These gray-silver vines are like that too. The 
year has worn tliem from the spring to the fall, 
and their sheen is grayed over and they are 

88 



JUST BEFORE THE LEAVES TURN 

broken a little. But they are the dearer because 
of it. Step carefully; we will not mar them, be- 
cause from us such would be spoliation. Let the 
good year wear them out; we will Itixuriate in the 
subdued gray, the sprawled, involved pattern, 
the awkward grace of them. 

The beauty is not all under foot when the 
autiunn is on the way. We cross the open and 
climb the fence where the squash hangs, and 
walk softly down the long aisle and into the nave 
of the temple, a glade among the boles where 
the open sky domes the space and the trees 
stand like columns marking the edge of the cen- 
tral rotunda. A little swing and dip opposite the 
point where we enter it forms the apse; and there 
is an altar, draped in the most graceful of tapestry 
and bearing a votive light of mystery and wonder; 
a big, round, half-rotted stirnip, covered with ivy, 
which clings to its rough bark and covers it with 
a valance of living green, and crowned with a 
clump of fungus that grows, yellow and bright, 
from the hollow top — truly an altar worthy the 
temple; and that orange -colored fimgus is more 
beautiful than flame of wax. 

The fimgus is so yellow and so bright and so 
colorful that it seems fairly to shed light like a 
blazing lamp, and the little glade is illimiinated 
and glorified by it. The brilliant yellow topping 

89 



DOWN TlIK \K\\l 

the rich ^rcen of the ivy, with the dark bark 
showing through in places, is a combination of 
color never to be forgotten while eyes retain their 
sensitiveness or mind its memory. 

Down here, protected by the canopy of the 
trees, the grass is still rich green and rank — a 
tufted carpet where we may kneel before the 
shrine. And the ivy leaves still show the gloss 
and sheen of their summer prime. The frost has 
been kept away by the thick cover of the leaves 
and we are in the midst of a bit of midsummer 
even while the vague, heart-breaking sadness of 
autumn is in the air and on the hills. The filmy, 
tenuous haze hangs above our lieads as the mem- 
ories of a happy youth-time glorify and mellow 
the austerities of age. The sky is a melting blue, 
like the blue of a maiden's eyes. What a blue it is 
as it arches above the trees in a sweep of utter 
majesty! Did you ever note before how infinite 
the .sky is when you look up at a little space of it 
through trees? You think you appreciate its vast- 
ness when you can let the vision sweep from 
zenith to horizon and from horizon to zenith and 
down to horizon again. But stand here in the 
glade in the woods and look up. The deep is 
deeper and the sweep more majestic than ever 
before, and all the deep and all the sweep filled 
with that soft, soft haze, and the eyes mist over 

90 



JUST BEFORE THE LEAVES TURN 

too, and the heart leaps and struggles, and the 
sotil soars in the deep blue space. The peace of 
the infinite is in it and the memories of the eternal. 
Light, filmy gray clouds float across the blue 
dome, so thin and sheer as to be scarcely visible. 
They are like the all but invisible veil that covers 
a bride's face; you cannot see the veil, but you 
cannot but see the tender mistiness it gives to 
her bright eyes and blooming cheeks and her 
whole radiant face. You see the cloud-veil only as it 
makes that blue arch more tender and misty. The 
light comes down upon us through the veil, cool 
and chaste, just ardent enough to show up with 
the sharp distinctness of a cameo all the lovely 
little details of the lovely glade and modest 
enough to make them all show forth their own 
peculiar beauty without being crushed and hidden 
in the glory. How restful and complacent is this 
light just before the leaves turn! The world 
seems so well satisfied with itself just now, like a 
man who has fought and beaten the follies of his 
youth, and won his battle with life, and begins to 
realize that he amounts to something in himself 
and need not be disturbed or anxious over his 
problems or perturbed as he faces old age. Has 
not he vindicated himself so far? Shall he be 
less able in the years to come than he has been in 
those just past? Verily, the problems of age and 

91 



DOWN THE YEAR 

winter arc as nothing to the soul or the world in 
the full satisfaction of the fulling-time of life or 
year when compared with those of youth and the 
spring. Good Old Year! He has come to middle 
age and is at his happiest, richest, fullest life. 

\Miile our eyes are turned to the sky the round 
globe of a maple gradually defines itself. You 
have been looking at it for minutes, but have not 
seen it, but there is something about the hard 
maple that will not be long neglected. It is like a 
strong, true, graceful, sweet personality; it has 
much of beauty and a great deal of strength and 
majesty and will make itself felt. If the hard 
maple were a man you would turn and look when- 
ever he entered the room. And when he stood up 
on the platform to speak — for he would be an 
orator, would the maple; not a rhetorician or an 
elocutionist, but a man with opinions worth cx- 
prCvSsing and able to express them — ever>'one 
would settle into close attention. The symmetri- 
cal, perfectly proportioned mass of the tree stands 
out against the filmy sky in striking perfection of 
form and grace of pose. How self-sufficient it is 
without being self-conscious! Neither abashed nor 
intrusive, it stands erect in its strong beauty and 
cares not whether you and I approve it or not. 
But who can help approving what cannot be im- 
proved, whether a tree or a man? The leaves of 

92 



JUST BEFORE THE LEAVES TURN 

the maple are still green, rich, and glossy. But up 
near the top a single bough has caught the frost 
that has not yet penetrated to the glade under 
the leaves, and flames red and yellow among the 
green, like a magnificent plume set in the helmet 
of a strong, gentle knight. And the good tree 
seems proud of the beauty it gives him. Why 
not? Has he not a right to this adornment who 
himself makes beautiful the place where he stands? 
Trees are very lilvc folk, and I cannot but think 
there is just the normal amount of personal vanity 
in the maple, the vanity that makes good, strong, 
gentle men so lovable. The maple is lovable in 
the same way. Because he stands erect and 
stands high, he has caught the chill of the frost, 
and it has left its mark on him. And he has by 
his own nobility and gentleness made it a mark 
of beauty. It takes a real man or a real tree to 
turn the weed of chill or scorn or sorrow or storm 
into a crest of majesty and be proud of it. Thank 
God for the maple tree — and for the maple-men! 

A whisper in the trees answers the whisper in 
the grass; but for this the whole world is full of 
the silence of worship here in this temple of syl- 
van prinlality. Those whispers are the antiphon 
from choir to choir, but it is all the same theme 
and the same heart-piercing melody. I call it 
melody, for I do not know what else to call it. 

93 



DOWN THE YEAR 

But it is not music, not a song. It is an antiphony 
of tender declamation, spoken — not sung — from 
grass to leaves and from leaves back to grass 
again, until the glade is full of it and it spreads 
up toward the sky; until the wood is full of it 
and it melts into the heart, the whisper of the 
goodness and sweetness and beauty that fills 
God's good, sweet world. 

Beyond the maple's rotund globe we may see 
an oak, a little ragged, but as true and good as 
the oaken heart covered by his rough bark. Not 
so tall nor so symmetrical as the maple, nor so per- 
fect in infoliation, the oak gives the impression of 
sturdy, companionable, dependable strength and 
reliability under strain. This particular tree 
to-day is wonderful because it seems that we can 
see the very blood of it coursing through its veins. 
An ivy has climbed up the trunk and followed 
ever}' limb to its uttermost tip. The iv>^ is more 
tender than the oak, and the early frost has in- 
carnadined every iv}' leaf, but left the dark-green 
oak leaves untouched, so that veins of scarlet nin 
through the green mass and outline the tnmk and 
branches. 

The cathedral now is full of the smell of in- 
cense. It rises in aromatic pungency and fills all 
the air about. Gazing upward and wrapped in 
the glor>'' of the vision, we might think ourselves 

94 



JUST BEFORE THE LEAVES TURN 

indeed and in truth standing where altars smoke 
and priests chant. It rises and touches the nos- 
trils pungently. Our heedless feet have trampled 
and bruised a clump of pennyroyal and the fra- 
grance of it fills the air, rich, sweet, aromatic, mys- 
tic. It refreshes the nerves and intoxicates the 
senses until our veins seem to throb with the very 
life of the wood and the autimm. The pennyroyal 
is an altogether delightful little herb. It grows 
low and modest and it loves the companionship of 
its own kind and grows in cltmips like loyal clans 
that find each other sufficient. It is not an 
eremite though, for it likes to be close to the 
trees, and while the little bunches and tufts of it 
sway stiffly in the sunshine for a large part of the 
day, it will always be found where the shade of 
the trees reaches it too. It is a very beautiful 
little plant to look at also, with its gracefully 
erect little stems and modestly independent bear- 
ing, its small, heart-shaped leaves worn so primly 
in exact intervals along the stem, and its tiny bluish 
flowers which you can scarcely see and which 
bloom for only a few days, then die and add fra- 
grance to the fragrant plant. And it is such a 
persistently good-natured creature too that I am 
sorry we stepped on it. But we should never have 
caught its fragrance unless we had crushed it. 
And its good-nature is so great and so persistent 

95 



DOWX TIIK YKAK 

that the more it is bruised and crushed the sweeter 
it is. You cannot spoil it, for if you break and 
mar the leaf and stem you only release the per- 
fiune, and this perfume will hang here in the 
glade all day long. Many modest souls are that 
way too; they give out their sweetest when bruised. 

The soft sun beams, the little wind whispers, 
the sweet air sparkles, the filmy light veils and 
sweeps and floats, the ineffable wonder of the late 
smnmer mingles with the mystic strangeness of 
earl}' fall, and the incense of the pennyroyal fills 
all the sun-shot, wind-kissed, blue-domed cup. 
We will make an offering. We gather a handful of 
the bruised pennyroyal and lay it beside the 
flamboyant toadstools on the top of the stump. 
So we offer swcct-smclling incense from the eartli 
to the God of the earth who has offered himself 
the light. It is before such altars as this that 
men worship. 

Now leave we the chapel where our oft'ering will 
perfume the air until night and take our way 
through the columns. There are some very beau- 
tiful colors and patterns to be seen on these trees, 
and we walk through a maze of wonder upon a 
carpet of magic. A few bright leaves lie upon 
the grass, like the unnoticed scraps pulled by the 
briars from a prince's robe. The sun comes 
flecking through the trees in a changing, moving 

96 



JUST BEFORE THE LEAVES TURN 

design that is bewildering and touches into mo- 
mentary relief the brilliant fragments, then leaves 
them in shadow while the green of the grass is 
gilded to the color of old gold. Look down that 
vista and watch the wonder. There is constant 
movement on the ground, as if a thousand beakers 
of the wines of the gods had been emptied there 
and were flowing in mingling color and sparkling 
current. The few leaves alread}^ down seem to 
dance and move, but they do not; that is the 
effect of the flickering sunshine as it is stirred up 
by the moving of the trees. Now it is all bright 
and strange; the light pauses for an instant. Now 
it is all dim and strange; a cloud sweeps across the 
sky and its shadow speeds across the earth. But it 
is gone even as we catch sight of its moving edges, 
and the brilliance moves again. 

There is a peculiar silence in the early fall- 
time, a silence that is like the light. The myriad 
of bird-notes and insects' dronings that make the 
stimmer a time of confusing melody is hushed, 
just as the distracting glow is subdued. Most of 
the birds have gone, and the bees are preparing 
their quarters for the long night, and many of the 
flitting winged creatures of reed-top and grass- 
pltmie and flower-cup and sun-filled space have 
spun their silken coverlids and entered upon their 
metamorphosis. So their songs and pipings and 

97 



DOWN THE YEAR 

hiimmings, their voices and flutes and string- 
tones, are lacking. And the single sounds that 
remain stand out clear and distinct in the silence 
like the details of leaf and twig, and plumy golden- 
rod and late flower and dust-covered weed stand 
out in the misty light. Such sound as there is 
carries far and comes to us distinctly: a single 
frog croaking from the pond over yonder, the call 
of a solitary jay hidden somewhere across the 
ravine in the trees, the crow of a cock, some 
children's voices from down along the brook. 
The notes come clear and distinct and with a 
peculiar pathetic quality. It is as if the frog and 
the jay and the cock and the children were all 
calling attention to the absence of the choir of 
the woods without meaning to do so, just as we 
so frequently rub rough hands over tender hearts 
when we are thinking only of our own bereave- 
ments and sorrows. 

But though the singers are gone, and the 
flowers are beginning to show signs of wear, 
there is still much of life in the woods. A squirrel 
springs chippering from almost at our feet and 
nms in irregular bounding leaps among the trees 
and scurries up a tall elm. He is about half-way 
to the branches when he flattens his furr>' body 
against the trunk. A shadow swoops across the 
grass and we start. It comes too swift and too 

98 



JUST BEFORE THE LEAVES TURN 

straight for a cloud. The clouds are moving 
lazily and erratically to-day and the cloud- 
shadows do not seem to come across the ground — 
they just are. The clouds move silently too, but 
this sweeping shadow comes with a rush and 
whizz. We look up just in time to see a great red- 
tailed hawk, wings rigid and curved talons ex- 
tended, swoop straight at the squirrel. It dashes 
against the tree and almost falls to the ground 
before it can recover flight, and just as we look 
to see the squirrel hanging from its claws the 
squirrel looks around the tree and laughs. He 
has escaped by darting around the tree at the 
moment the frightful talons clutched. That de- 
risive chatter is too much for his hawkship, and he 
wheels and comes back. Not quite so recklessly 
this time, for that crash against the tree has 
taught the red-tailed buccaneer caution. But he 
comes straight and true, claws ready, wings set, 
and the tawny rudder ready to check the force of 
the collision. But when the claws close again 
there is no squirrel. He is around on our side of 
the tree again lying flat against the bark. His 
movement has been too quick to see, but he is 
motionless while his enemy gathers himself up 
and flies away with a scream. Then Mr. Squirrel 
comes to life and sends out his mocking chatter 
again. The hawk tries it a third time, but only 

99 



DOWN THE YEAH 

half-hcarledly, and gives it up and goes elsewhere 
for his dinner. And now the true squirrcl-ness of 
the little brown rascal shows itself, for he runs up 
to the fork of the tree, produces an acorn from 
somewhere — I cannot see whether he takes it from 
the pouch of his cheek or from a crevice in the 
bark — and makes the chips fly, chattering and 
screaming all the time, for all the world like a 
little truculent whiffet who has kept C(X)1 long 
enough to escape a big bully and when danger is 
past, gives way to exiguous anger and boasts 
loudly of what he will do to him when he comes 
back. The red squirrel is altogether an amusing 
little scamp. He is a good fellow too, who makes 
friends easily, as well as a thoroughgoing egoist. 
He was never afraid of that hawk for a minute, 
for he knew he could baffle it, and he depended 
upon himself to see him safe. And the exploit of 
eating the acorn as soon as he has leisure — to 
show how little he really is concerned — well, he is 
delightful, truly. But how nearly a tragedy it 
was! Or it seems so to us because we do not 
understand so well as the squirrel. 

A little pond lies over here to the left where we 
can just see a glimmer of greenish silver. The 
water lies low among rushes and coarse grass, 
and the green falling upon the smooth surface 
makes it look like some kind of fairy alloy that 

lOO 



r*- 





THE WATER LIES LOW AMONG RUSHES 



JUST BEl ORE THE LEAVES TURN 

has the sheen of silver and the green of the rush. 
I have seen green gold, but never before have I 
seen green silver. So we have found something 
more rare than anything heretofore known in the 
world. You cannot see the sky in this little pond; 
the grass and rushes have crowded up and into 
the very water so that you can see only their 
green reflection. If we could, somehow, put our 
heads out on the end of a pole and turn them so as 
to look straight down, we would see the sky then, 
and an amazing deep sky it would be. But, un- 
fortunately, the heads are fastened, and it is not 
safe to get one's feet wet at this time of the year, 
and we have no wading boots. But no matter. A 
green-deep pond is more striking than a blue-deep 
one because it is not so conunon. The frog hushes 
as we approach, and unless you are prepared for 
it — There! That is what I was going to tell you. 
He was in the grass right at the edge of the water 
and stayed there until oiu* big, climisy feet, 
cltmiping down, threatened to crush him. Then 
he leaped, sprawling through the air, but diving 
cleanly head first into the water. He seems to 
jump from under our very feet, and unless you 
are prepared for it he will startle you — ^just as he 
did us. 

The ripples from his plunge widen and widen 
and make a small commotion against the mud at 

lOI 



DOWN THi: VKAR 

our feet, and over across where they have circled 
out until they reach the far side of the pond we 
can see the grasses moving from their impulse, 
although the water is smooth again; and as soon 
as it is smooth the water-spiders come out from 
their hiding places among the grass and begin 
again their giddy dance on the slippery floor. I 
wonder whether they are crazy, or have Saint 
Vitus's dance, or are really doing something, or 
only think they are, or are weaving a mystic spell 
of interlacing tracks across the water to entangle 
the frog, or arc wound up and cannot help it. 
They act just like the folks on a crowded street; 
they rush about, in and out, and dodge around 
each other, and when one has come to the edge of 
the group he flicks back to the center again, and 
they flicker and swann and scatter and swarm 
again, just a black splotch of movement on the 
water. You cannot follow one of them very long 
with your eyes, or your eyes will be hopelessly 
tangled. They act for all the world as if they 
were folks. I wonder why folks do it. I can 
understand why the spiders do; they do not 
know any better than just to hurr>' about 
among themselves, getting nothing done, but 
making a prodigious flurr\'. But folks do know 
better — or ought to. They ought to know that 
however much there is to do, or to pretend to 

1 02 



JUST BEFORE THE LEAVES TURN 

do — somehow, we act as if we were disgraced 
unless we keep up the appearance of doing all 
the time — there is much more to be accom- 
plished by getting away sometimes to where there 
are no hurriers and being alone in his temples 
with the Unhurried God and the unhurrying world 
he made and dwells in; much more of hope and 
peace and power, of strong heart-acts and light 
and truth. 

We gaze and gaze into the cool, -deep, infinitely 
deep green wonder of the pond until we are fas- 
cinated. When I look into still water I can under- 
stand why some people believe in crystal-gazing as 
a means of discovering mysteries, but not how 
anyone can believe in the crystal. We see mys- 
teries in the deeps of this silver-green pond this 
afternoon. They are the veritable mysteries of 
God, and I believe he means for us to seek them 
out and gaze into them and know him better by 
it. But how one can believe in the mystery of a 
glass ball is a greater mystery than anything else. 
And, verily, when one has gazed into the deeps of 
God's clear crystal of limpid revelation everything 
else becomes cheap and trivial. How the sordid- 
ness and grime and pettiness fade to nothingness 
when the infinite is spread before one as in a sheet 
of quiet water on a tranquil day! Is there a soul 
that doubts the greatness and goodness and 

103 



DOWX Tin: YEAR 

eternity of the things that arc real, and is clogged 
and suffocated with the selfishness and meanness 
and temporality of the things that only seem? 
Let him seek the companionship of trees for a 
while, and fellowship with the flowers and birds 
and squirrels, and look for an hour into a pool ni 
water lying in the shade. He will receive a new 
valuation of the universe. 

Water is wonderful; it is like life in showing so 
many phases of beauty. Not far from the pond a 
little brook sings and sparldes and hurries and 
loiters its way over pebbles and bowlders and mud 
and sand, between banks high and steep or low 
and flat, through meadow and field and wood and 
under little bridges. A footbridge, made of a 
single plank fastened with wire to trees on either 
side to prevent its being carried awa}' when the 
spring rains fill the brook to overflowing, crosses 
from one high banlc to the other. Just before the 
stream reaches the bridge it broadens in an open, 
sunny spot into a pool, big as a dinner table, quiet, 
and .shallower than the narrow neck just above it. 
Half the pool is in shadow, half in sunshine. The 
shaded half is mysterious-looking and black; the 
sunny part sweet and sparkling. It is the branch 
of a tree which shades it, and the shadow keeps 
moving and shifting, and the line between sun and 
shade is not sharp nor constant, so there is con- 

104 



JUST BEFORE THE LEAVES TURN 

tinual change and play over the surface. But one 
half is in shade and one in sun. 

A peculiar dimpling of the water of this little 
pool attracts our attention. It is not a splash, 
although it makes you think of a splash, and 
surely think the drops will show next time. It is 
not a ripple either. There is just a dimple exactly 
like you see in a baby's cheek when she smiles, as 
deep and tender as that and as quickly done. 
While we watch, a minnow leaps- clear of the 
water, flashes a white and silver signal in the 
sun, and drops again into the cool depths. Then 
another and another and another — ^here, ^^onder, 
through sun or shade, this side, yon side, they 
spring up. And we look and see that the dimples 
are where the tiny fishes do not spring quite clear, 
but catch the surface a little smack with tails that 
do not cut into the air above. And they leap and 
gleam and flicker like water-fairies dancing. They 
are not over two inches long and all white and 
silver, graceful and slender and full of the springy 
vitality that possesses all young things regardless 
of the season. They are romping and having a 
good time. That is what this autumn world is for. 

Below the little bridge the water goes tumbling 
over stones and the root of a tree in a miniature 
waterfall that makes music sweeter than tone of 
violin or flute. Our cathedral has its columned 

105 



DOWN THE YEAR 

nave and lighted altar and incense; here is its 
organ, and the music of it fills the air together with 
the incense, and ear and nostril become gates into 
the soul for the simultaneous entrance of the in- 
toxication of the sound and of the fragrance. The 
water is dark below the bridge, and it seems a 
little strange, for we have loitered here so often 
during the summer to enjoy the jewels scintillating 
and flashing in the waterfall and tiny rapids. But 
now the jewels are all gone and the water pours 
over the tree-root in a slate-colored veil and 
troubles itself above the stones in shadowy 
perturbation. 

We cross the bridge and come to a fence. Be- 
yond the fence the road lies dusty and white. 
Here we must leave the cathedral and take our 
way down the path of the world again. But we 
shall not leave the spirit of the worshiping place 
behind. The smell of the incense is in our nostrils; 
the glow of the yellow altar-fire is in our eyes; 
the music of falling water is in our ears, the deep, 
deep wonder of it is on our hearts. 

The roadside weeds are powdered gray, except 
the smartweed, which is brown. The roadway is 
thick and soft with the dust of countless foot- 
steps of men and horses and other fellows of the 
road. And it rises in little puffs beneath our feet 
as we plod down the way that is as old as man, 

106 



JUST BEFORE THE LEAVES TURN 

the way of labor, workaday toil, and common- 
placeness. But the gray dust turns crimson as it 
puffs up in the late red sun of the autumn after- 
noon, and the housetops, as we come in sight of 
them, are glory-tipped, and the trees are gilded, 
and the fences and posts and such common things 
are changed in the light from the scarlet sunset, 
and our faces shine with it. 

The way of the commonplace? Verily. But 
that is the way of God's glory! 



107 




THE JIIKCM IS BIZARRE IN HIS SILVER RAGS 



THE GRAPEVINE 

A GRAPEVINE in autumn is one of the most 
wonderful things God ever made and let a man 
look at. In the spring it is wonderful too, but 
that is a dainty, evanescent wonder of elusive 
fragrance and tender color. The autumn wonder 
of it is a wonder of richness and soft, strong color, 
and prodigality, and deep, quiet truth-telling. 

Somehow, a grapevine always seems the symbol 
of generous honesty and modest, solid worth 
among all the gorgeousness and glow of the 
autimm-time. The oaks are reservedly opulent 
in their dark, rich crimson. The maples are 
brilliant in yellow and orange and red. The 
birch is bizarre in his silver rags, looking like a 
masquerader costumed as a fairy prince who has 
been caught by hoodlums on his way home and has 
l^arely escaped with his tinsel tatters to cover him. 
The sycamores are not much better. But they 
wear their rags with more dignity and there is 
less glint of silver. They do not pretend so much. 
The elm is always graceful, and no less when the 
first frosts and breezes from the north have scat- 
tered its leaves. The elm always makes me think 
of a stately old gentleman whose gentle birth and 

109 



DOWN TIIK VKAK 

habitual politeness can never be forgotten, no 
matter how bare circumstances may strip him, 
and whose hope of better days to come is peren- 
nial. Of course, he is a gentleman, the elm. Has 
he not the very air of it in his graceful, sweeping 
limbs? Will his fortunes not be recovered next 
spring? He knows they will. And he is never 
disappointed. Neither is the human gentle soul 
whose hope is in the same God, albeit sometimes 
that God lets him have a richer and nobler fortune 
in his soul than the one he has lost in bank or 
farm. But the grapevine is subdued in color, 
modest in mien, generous in richness and alto- 
gether comfortable. 

The brown weeds and sere rushes nod in grace 
like good-natured gnomes, the creeper drapes the 
gaunt skeleton of a dead tree with festoons of 
blood, the brown grass is soft and silent as velvet 
under the foot, and Autumn calls and offers wine 
in beakers of cr^'stal sunshine. 

We'll go and taste the hospitality of the jolly, 
rascally old scamp. He could not keep sober to 
save his life — if he did he would not save it, for 
if he is sober he dies — but he is a great host for 
all that; and if you can stand and watch where 
his devotees foregather without shouting and join- 
ing in the mirth, then you truly need a draught of 
his wine to warm your blood. 

I lO 



THE GRAPEVINE 

He is a deceitful old rogue too, as well as a 
roysterer. You would never know him by his 
dress and manner. His guests, the gay trees and 
vines and feathery weeds and chirping sparrows 
and flame-colored tanagers, seem' a strange crew 
to be holding carnival on his preserves. To see 
him you would take him for anything but the 
jovial reprobate he is. All robed in brown like a 
Capuchin monk, with mystery in the folds of his 
dun cowl, he sits on the hills or walks through the 
lanes or taps at your window with downcast face 
and saddened mien, and his invitation is given in 
the most sorrowful voice you can imagine. He 
wants you to think he is solemn. 

He bulldozes some folks too, so that you hear 
them speak of the melancholy time when he is 
master of the year. But do not be afraid of him 
or shrink from a little familiarity. He is not so 
sad, and far from as dignified as he pretends. 
Tweak up his cowl and look at the merry eyes 
and smiling lips and red nose. He will not rebuke 
you. In fact, if you do not do something like 
that he is apt to wander on and leave you gazing 
after him and pitying his sadness. And as sure 
as you do that, the sadness becomes yours and the 
old fraud laughs in his hood. 

I went out with him one day into his estates, 
the woods and brakes and brambles, and got ac- 

III 



DOWN Tin: m:ak 

quainted with him. You cannot know the true 
spirit of the Autumn until you meet him on his 
own ground and let your soul go in sympathy 
with him. The brown, subdued, monkish, sor- 
rowful air is only a disguise. It is thrown off 
when one comes close. Under the flaming trees, 
among the gorgeous vines and bushes, where the 
sparkling sunshine falls free and unshadowed, and 
nimble winter birds chirrup and flit, Autumn is as 
hilarious as a schoolboy. 

WTiy not? The year is coming to the close of 
his day's work. The twilight is closing in. The 
work is all done. So the year lays aside the sober, 
labor-stained garments and dons the brighter ones 
of leisure. The family has gathered together and 
all are happy. I like to think of Autumn in his 
true character of a hearty, husky toiler who has 
come home after a hard day's work and puts on 
his holiday garments for a joyous evening before 
the fires go out and the night falls. Look at the 
color; listen to the whisper in the air; stretch 
your hands to the season; and heart beats quick, 
and blood bounds free, and breath comes full, and 
soul swells for very joy. 

Yes, I like Autumn without his disguise; I 
can trust him. But one must be careful of his 
wine. It goes to the head with amazing quick- 
ness and causes grave indiscretions. I have seen 

I 12 



THE GRAPEVINE 

one of the most staid, grave, dignified, straight- 
backed preachers of my acquaintance quaff a 
goblet from Autimm's hand, and straightway high 
hat flew one way, eyeglasses brought up short 
on their cord on the other side, and clerical 
coat tails spread in a most unholy gyration, while 
the echoes that live back in the hills forgot their 
timidity and showed themselves as they looked 
over the tops in amazement at the consignment 
of sound sent them from the clerical throat. 

I followed Autumn down through the aisles of 
his trees. He stopped and bade me sit down 
with him on the ground where the sun fell warm 
on the brown grass and the long blades leaned 
parted in drooping curves of grace. He told me 
to part them further with my hands, and I did. 
I looked into their network of traced stems and 
further down between them to the basking earth. 
Clear and sharp as a cameo each blade and leaf 
and crinkled fiber stood out. And down among it 
all scurried the little creatures of the mold, active 
and eager, running about on a thousand errands 
of grave import wholly unknown to the great 
creature bending over their world. Then he told 
me to look up, and a late butterfly went flitting 
and careening through the grass tops and fell 
helpless, a poor sprite of the summer who could 
not bear the deep, rich autumn life. 

113 



DOWN TIIK \V:\\{ 

And I went with him, on down through the 
painted corridors of the wood and he showed me the 
grapevine. And when he threw back his monkish 
cowl to look at his proudest possession, I saw back 
of the joviality and camaraderie of him the serious- 
ness shining through. For, after all, he is a solid 
old chap, though not solemn and .sad as he pre- 
tends. He is only serious. His grapevine was a 
wonder-thing. It had climbed up a dead tree and 
covered the very tips of the scraggy limbs. I am 
glad it did that. The poor tree must stand there 
in its gaunt grotcsqueness else. But the white 
limbs were draped and covered with the vine. 
The vine leaves still hung, but the rich green of 
the summer was replaced with a soft, fleecy, 
downy brown as tender and clinging as the fluffy 
stuff a mother wraps a baby in. And the richest 
brown! Not brilliant, like the brown of the oak 
leaf, nor weak like that of sere grass, but rich and 
strong in tone like the note of a violoncello, sweet 
and satisfying. I wanted to climb up and lie 
down and dream away the day in the restful 
coverlid. 

The full clusters cascaded through the brown 
leaves as if one of Autumn's gnomes, frolic-mad, 
had rushed into the workshops beneath the hills 
and caught up the crucible full of melted ame- 
thysts and flung it over the vine to nm down in 

114 



THE GRAPEVINE 

rich torrents and congeal. What an opulence of 
color are purple grapes among brown leaves! As 
deep and true in color as the deep, true eyes of a 
wife! As round and perfect in form as a baby's 
finger-tips! 

And old Autumn and I stood there and looked. 
And he was proud of his vine, and I was proud 
that he let me see it. Rich, honest, generous vine! 
Rich, honest, generous Autumn! 

I plucked a cluster and the rich blood of it 
stained my hand, red and gorgeous. I put a 
grape into my mouth. I squeezed out the juice, 
rich with the rare flavor that only a frost-ripened 
wild grape possesses. I cannot tell how it tastes. 
But if you will recall the most glorious June day 
of your whole life, close your eyes and imagine 
again the wonder of the sunshine, feel on your 
face the caress of June winds, make yourself 
smell again the fragrance of June flowers, glory 
and softness and sweetness, and make them all 
into a flavor — if you can taste a June day, you 
know what it is. For the grape is a June day, 
ripened and transmuted so as to appeal to yet 
another sense. How wonderfully good God is! I 
can see the sun; I can feel the breeze; I can smell 
the fragrance; I can hear a bird's song; but I can- 
not taste them. So God's vine gathers it all up 
and makes a grape of it, and God's sunshine 

115 



DOWN Tin: ^ KAK 

strikes into it, and God's breeze blows upon it, 
and God's fragrance melts into it; then, God's 
autumn shows it to me; and I, God's man, pluck 
and press and taste the sunshine that has shone 
into that grape through the sinnmer. 

And while the taste hangs on my tongue, and 
my eyes drink the glory of the color all about 
and the color on the vine — surely, all this is 
God's glory shining into my soul. I can feel it, 
know it coming in. God is shining himself into 
me. And some day, in his good, glorious autumn 
time, one will come on whose frontlet is writ 
"Destiny," who will pluck and press. And be- 
cause it is God who has shincd into it, this soul 
will give out God again under the pressure even 
as the grape gives out the sunshine. 

Even so. 

Shine, sun of God! 



Il6 



A WINTER DAY ON A COUNTRY CIRCUIT 

I AM a circuit preacher. This statement does 
not entitle me to any special consideration. I 
make it merely to make clear that I have the 
opportunity of seeing wonderful things. I thank 
God for the eyes and the opportunity to see the 
wonders of his out-of-doors. One Sunday after- 
noon in December I start on a four-mile drive to 
a lonely country church. I really drive four miles 
through the aisles and corridors of God's most 
wonderful temples. The afternoon air is full of a 
peculiar, dusky semiradiance. The sky, neither 
blue nor gray, 3^et both blue and gray, is a color- 
tone that I can liken to nothing that I have ever 
seen — soft, fluffy, modestly brilliant, as if simimer 
blue and winter gray were mingled yet not merged. 
And the whole is permeated by a myriad of float- 
ing, dustlike particles of a dunlike tarnished gold. 
Through this beautifully weird atmosphere of 
dusty brilliance, fire-lines and gemmy sparkles 
shoot and glimmer and shift, as if the earth were 
at the center of a great opal and I could see from 
inside the jewel the magnificent play and change 
of fire and color. The sun is veiled — not hidden, 
not obscured, but veiled, as the face of an Eastern 

.117 



j)()\\\ Tin: \i:\\{ 

woman is veiled when she goes abroad — with a 
misty, transparent, filmy veil which heightens and 
enhances the rose and carnation tints of cheeks 
and lips, the pearly gleam of brow, the brilliance 
of the eye, yet conceals the grosser appearance of 
the countenance. There is none of the hard, 
diamondlike brilliance of the winter sun. That is 
hidden by the veil. There is none of the in- 
tolerable fervor of summer. That is subdued by 
the gold dust in the air. There is none of the 
languorous glow of spring. That is invigorated 
into keenness by the cold. There is none of the 
burning, scorching ardor of autumn. That is 
cooled and filtered by the film of mist. It is just 
the sun of that day, neither summer sun, winter 
sun, spring sun, nor autumn sun. You have 
heard singers speak of a veiled voice; this is a 
veiled sun. His beauty, his light, his glory shed 
themselves through the \'cil about me and over 
the earth, like the melody from the throat of the 
singer, and my soul melts into the glory of that 
great mystery which comes filtering and sprinkling 
from the face of the heavenly sun through the 
color and change and misty glow of the winter 
afternoon. It falls upon me, about me. into my 
heart. I am one of the infinitesimal bits of gold 
dust that float in the air. I am part of it all. 
This is the intoxication of the melody of light 

Ii8 



A WINTER DAY ON A COUNTRY CIRCUIT 

that flows downward through the veil and lifts 
my soul as melody of sound has never lifted me. 
All the landscape luxuriates in the unusual glow. 
It seems not unreal nor unusual, however. None 
of the moods of nature are unusual. All are a 
matter of course. And I am glad that God has 
made the earth so that it is never incongruous 
nor abnormal. And I am glad that he has made 
it so it is all and always so unusual that we ever 
see something new about himself in the change. 
Field and meadow, brook and bank, snow and 
cloud, tree and shrub and grass tell me a different 
story this afternoon than any I have heard, be- 
cause God deluges them and me with the light of 
a veiled sun, and reflects the light back into my 
eyes from every ice-pool and snowdrift and brown 
hollow. I see a new earth and my eyes almost 
penetrate into a new heaven. 

The road lies along a field newly plowed. The 
rough, uneven surface lies like a suddenly con- 
gealed sea of lava. The smooth surfaces left 
polished by the plowshare gleam in the peculiar 
light and send back bright beams and points. The 
thin snow does not cover the ground, but overlies 
the inequalities as the lichen overlies the uneven- 
ness of the bowlder. Looking across the stretch 
before me, the field presents a symmetrical, regu- 
lar succession of wave-forms in alternate black 

119 



DOWN THK YKAH 

and white, as if two lakes of pitch and milk were 
tossing in the same basin, under the same wind, 
yet without mingling. How strange is this day, 
with its minglings and mixings and dual appear- 
ances! But it is not black and white at all when 
a closer look shows up the real colors of that 
field. It is not black, but a deep brown, rich as 
the cloying lusciousness of the cocoa berry, and 
showing a silvery sheen in the sunlight: a brown 
that supplies, in the symphony of this afternoon, 
the deep, rich, heart-shaking 'cello tones which 
give substance and volume and weight to the 
entire orchestra; smoothing the shrill piccolo of 
the snow crystals; bearing up and carrying in in'e- 
sistible sweep the soft, whispering violin tones of 
the golden, trembling air; steadying and softening 
the brassy blare of the ice-blue shadows on the 
brook. 

And the snow is not white, but shaded and 
modified by tints that have no name, and that 
are never seen save through the tears which well 
up from a heart bursting in its effort to contain 
and retain the strains of the color-melody. What 
a symphony it is — a s>Tnphony of color, of m}'s- 
tery, of gray mist, of sul)dued tones, of soft 
minors, and mystic, hidden themes! How the 
heart aches! How it longs to bunst out and 
swell and swell and swell until it can contain 

1 20 



A WINTER DAY ON A COUNTRY CIRCUIT 

all the intensity, the meaning that is so mightily 
apparent, that throbs in the color, in the sym- 
metry, in the sighing winter wind, and yet is 
hidden. It is exquisite music. It is exquisite 
pain. The heartstrings are like to snap as they 
attime themselves to the symphony of a winter 
day. 

Beyond the plowed field is a cornfield. The 
stalks, stripped of their burden of ears, stand 
bravely in their rank and file like tattered soldiers 
guarding their line of battle even when the bullets 
of the enemy and the roughness of their own 
march have well-nigh stripped their imiforms from 
their backs. They stand bravely, these wamors 
of the field. They have a right still to wave their 
ragged plumes in the chilly air and rustle their 
tattered, gold-bright uniforms in this gold-bright 
afternoon. Have they not stood there all through 
the spring and summer and fall and done battle 
with the wind and rain and hail and scorching sun, 
guarding the precious trust given them? Have 
they not conquered? Have they not captured, by 
very force of dauntless energy and wonderful skill 
at arms, the ozone from wind, and oxygen from 
rain, and mysterious life and force from simbeam, 
and brought all into the treasure their husky knap- 
sacks held? Have they not turned the very gims 
of the enemy against him? Have they not a right 

121 



DOWN THE YEAR 

to stand still in their yet unbroken line? And they 
do stand and wave their plumes in this dun-gray 
day, and send out little modest flashes of light from 
the untarnished portions of their once polished bay- 
onets. The conifield is a yellow-brown stretch, 
with the snow giving an additional mellowness to 
its brown. Unlike the plowed field, the brown of 
cornstalks and the white of snow do not contrast. 
Rather do they mutually mellow each other. The 
snow has a softer, milder white from its juxtapo- 
sition with the brown stalks. The com has a 
mellower, more evasive tone because of the snow. 
And both are beautiful beyond expression. This 
mingling of a light snow with the autumn tints is 
one of God's everyday miracles. And when it 
occurs on a gold -powdered day it is more won- 
derful still. 

This is a brown day. In the meadows is a 
deeper, richer brown than that of the cornfields, a 
brown that shades imperceptibly into gray as it 
recedes into the shadows of the distance. The 
dry, waving grass does not reveal the snow, but I 
know it is there because of the hint I have in the 
whisper and glimmer that come when the brown 
grass moves. I know it is there as I know that 
love is in the heart of my wife when I look into 
the shadows and the deep-gleaming mysteries of 
her eyes. Varying, shifting shades play over the 

122 



A WINTER DAY ON A COUNTRY CIRCUIT 

brown shadow as the clouds float in front of the 
sun and then move aside like playful children 
passing between the lamp and the wall and 
laughing at the shadows. And ever that luster 
from the wonderful sky! A rattling bridge of 
planks crosses a stream. The boards are shrunk 
so that great gaps appear between them through 
which come the gleam and ripple of water, and I 
have the pectiliar sensation of traveling in mid- 
air and looking downward toward the earth. The 
horse is startled at the sudden transition from 
terra firma to the air route, and bows his neck 
and glances apprehensively downward, as if to 
assure himself that he still stands on something 
tangible and secure. The view from this midair 
observatory is like a scene from an old fairy play. 
Upstream is a snowy white wood vista. The bed 
of the stream forms a passageway among the 
trees, and the rounded banks, rising on either 
hand, look like heaps of pillows piled by the crea- 
tures of the wood to retain the little brook within 
its bounds and mark off the limits of its license. 
The stream itself is a long ribbon of white and 
blue-black ice, broken into fragments near the 
bridge by the outcropping of rocks from the 
bottom. The stones are ice-covered and glisten- 
ing, rounded and smooth, but forming a piece of 
most wonderful mosaic of blue-white shades laid 

123 



DOWN THE YEAR 

upon the dead white of the ice below. A fringe 
hangs over each margin of the stream so that no 
hard, distinct line appears where earth and ice 
meet; a fringe of softest, purest white where the 
grasses and twigs have caught and held the snow 
in fluffs of down. Here and there a dark opening 
appears in the etched white wall where a rabbit 
has made his way down to the edge and turned 
back to his cozy winter home when he found there 
only ice. There is not a sound that one can name, 
not a movement that one can see, yet down that 
rounded channel, through the interlacing naked- 
ness of boughs and shrubs, comes the pulse of all 
the wonderful life of the winter woods. I feel it 
on my cheeks, the scent of it is in my nostrils, the 
throb of it is in my heart. I cannot go up that 
pathway to meet it, however, because I belong 
for this afternoon to the creatures of the shingled 
roof and ruddy hearth. 

But I want to go! 

Below the bridge the water tumbles from be- 
neath the ice into a little open basin, and dimples 
and blackens, and gives out little silver flashes and 
invites me to a plunge. But I know it has a 
chill which strikes through the very marrow, even 
though it does try to hide it in silver and blue 
dimples. I will come back here in August and ac- 
cept the invitation then, for I know the stream is 

124 



A WINTER DAY ON A COUNTRY CIRCUIT 

laughing in anticipation of the prank it would play 
on me. I am acquainted with the ways of brooks. 
And there it goes, rippling out along between its 
banks across the wide, wonderful meadow. A lit- 
tle further along lies a wheatfield. Here is another 
of the singular beauties of this singular day. The 
wheat is green, brilliantly, deeply, richly green, such 
a green as flashes from the bleeding heart of an 
emerald just cut on the lapidary's stone. How 
green it is! And how cold! The snow is half hid- 
den among the wheat, but the wheat is green of 
a hue that cannot be heightened, but is peculiarly 
affected by the half -hidden white. The field is not 
mottled with white like the plowed ground. It is 
not overlaid with white as the smooth surface of 
the road. It is not underlaid with white like the 
brown meadow. But among the green wheat the 
white of the snow lies mingled as the colors are 
mingled which a painter spreads upon his canvas. 
A practiced eye can discern the different colors, 
but each one gives to all the rest its own peculiar 
tone, while at the same time sinking its own hue 
into the color-tone of the whole. Peculiarly en- 
hanced is the green, peculiarly modified is the white 
in this frigid combination. It is a combination of 
color to make the heart shiver with cold. No 
wonder the little oak shrub, standing in the edge 
of the field, rattles its stiff leaves as if in distress. 

125 



DOWN TIIK VKAK 

The frost has been sudden and j-evcre. The leaves 
on that Httlc shrub have not had time to change 
gradually to the dark red which is the oak's winter 
cognizance. They have been frozen while the sap 
yet flowed, and have retained their glossy green 
with just an edging of brown. And that green and 
white field seems to keep them stiff and hard by 
the ver>' force of its cold color. It looks familiar 
and yet strange; those leaves should be dry and 
red. They are green and brown, with a sheen upon 
them like that of opal glass in old cathedral win- 
dows. They are stiff and rigid and rattle in the 
breeze. They should be soft and rustling. I 
gather some of them, but soon they melt from 
exquisite porcelain to a mass of wet unpleasant- 
ness in my hand. 

A sudden whirr of little wings attracts my at- 
tention to the other side of the road. When I 
turn I am in fairyland. The snowbirds have risen 
from the brow of a long stretch of snow dunes 
that are more beautiful than anything ever 
imagined by the most ethereal of mystics. The 
horse must go slowly here. Not a single curve 
or glint of this beauty can be missed. The drift 
lies along the hedge, and the coping of its simimit 
reaches to the height of the wheel and, in some 
places, to the horse's back. As far as I can see, 
the marvelous succession of surprise goes on. The 

126 



A WINTER DAY ON A COUNTRY CIRCUIT 

wind has erected the snow into ramparts of 
marble. Beneath the protection of their over- 
hanging ridges the Master Sculptor has done his 
choicest work. Here are forms as graceful as 
grace of angels; shapes and patterns that no 
geometrician can ever measure and no artist ever 
pencil, as beautiful as the dreams of a child; 
shapes fantastic as the wildest hallucinations of 
hashish; mounds and swelling undulations and up- 
heavings, as daintily rounded and velvety soft, as 
sweetly, dazzling white, as a maiden's bosom. 
Here spring up pillars and colimms and pilasters 
such as never were seen in classic sculpture. 
Forms of grandeur, nobility, majesty are here. 
Grand, sweeping, perfect curves alternate with 
long stretches of the most delicate and dainty 
lacework. Great fluffs of down lie piled up about 
the borders of gleaming fiats like the clouds that 
tumble away in mighty, rolling masses from the 
face of the summer moon. Deep grottoes and 
mountain peaks, fairy caves and enchanted hills, 
castles, palaces — I wander through them all, and 
in the snow I find the treasures of the Infinite. 
Along the base of the range of snow-mountains 
the roadside weeds have been transformed into 
things of wonder. Tall plumes, whiter than the 
brow of purity, lift themselves, feathery, soft; 
but they fall in a shower of diamonds at my 

127 



DOWN TIIK YEAR 

touch. Mantles of whitest ermine drape the 
columns, and couches of fur invite repose. Here 
I seem to see, condensed into one stretch of coun- 
try road, all the beauty of form that the universe 
contains. It is as if I had within my grasp the 
abstraction of beauty and could express it as I 
would. But I am afraid to try to express it, for 
only in the outdoor world of God can such beauty 
as this be bom. 

It is growing too dark to see more. My heart 
is full too, and I ain bending, tired from the 
beauty of the day. The air has lost the golden 
mistiness, and the blue is dying from the sky. A 
great gray cloud comes out of the west. The 
shadows grow gray. The earth and sky and all 
lose their tints and merge into the gray. I cannot 
see where earth and sky meet. A snowflake falls 
upon my face, soft as a baby's kiss. The night is 
falling too. It was a kiss — the good-by kiss of 
the day. The cloud from the west comes on and 
more flakes fall. 

It is growing dark. I answer the farewell of the 
day. 

I will go home. 



128 



WHEN THE WIND BLEW 

The Wind came shouting and tearing out of the 
west the other day Hke a great rowdy schoolboy 
just let loose from a long, dull afternoon of frac- 
tions and capital cities and polysyllables and such 
abominations. I heard him coming and went out 
and looked and watched his approach. The west 
flamed, for it was just at school-closing time of a 
snowless winter day. There were scarlet and blue 
and purple and cold silver and gray-steel and 
yellow-gold and blue-transparent cloud-veils and 
broad-dashed color and close-gathered mist- 
wreaths, all in the glory of it; and out of this 
royal gateway came the Wind. 

I heard his whistle first, clear and far away; 
then the sweep of his robe and the tramp of his 
feet as he trod the brown earth with speedy 
majesty. And I stood and looked into the gray 
countenance of him. Truly the Winter Wind 
from the west is like a schoolboy, not only in the 
rush and tramp and shout and boisterous coming 
of him, but in the amazing transformations of 
which he is capable. 

There be those mortals of poor blood and tender 
frame who shiver and growl at the coming of the 

129 



DOWN THK VKAK 

Wind in winter. I am sorry for them. The>- 
are afraid to go out and look into the face of 
the tempest and feel the great lifting rush of it 
and listen to the diapason organ music that ac- 
companies the Wind. I am sorry for them — they 
miss so much. What can one know of wind who 
has never heard it except through a chimney or in 
the peevish whine of a door-crevice (echoed still 
more peevishly by the fire-hugger), or felt it 
except as a draft to be dreaded and guarded 
against, or seen it at all? W^hat can one know 
of wind who has never snuffed it until nostrils 
tingle and eyes mist over? What can one know 
of wind who has never opened his arms wide and 
let it pound on his breast and clasped it there? 
Never tell me that Winter Wind is dreadful; I 
know better. For I have gone out into the open 
with him and been knocked and thumped by 
him, and fought back, and yelled when he shouted, 
and whooped when he screeched, so that man- 
whoop and wind-screech have gone whirling to- 
gether in one eerie note along and out to where 
these disturbances we know as sounds die and are 
gathered into the music of God's universe as into 
heaven. 

You can take such liberties as this with the 
west wind in winter. 

And you can take just such liberties with a 

130 



WHEN THE WIND BLEW 

romping boy. Trtily they are much alike. I 
watched the Wind coming. I caught him square 
on my breast. I turned with him and watched 
him go soaring into the leaden east. And my 
soul went soaring with him. A boy has that 
way with him too. He comes bounding and 
boisterous and flings himself straight into your 
outstretched arms — whose arms are not out- 
stretched to him? — verily, straight through your 
arms clear down into your heart, and there is no 
room for anything else. Then he will take you 
and make you look into his face and through his 
eyes into the limpid deep soul of him until you are 
caught and borne away into infinities of goodness 
and greatness and majesty — with a sweep and a 
swing as of the wind — as you contemplate the 
unlimited possibilities of that man-soul. "The 
wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest 
the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it 
Cometh, and whither it goeth." So is the soul of 
a man-child. The romp and shout and glad 
boisterousness are there. And so are the high, 
strong thoughts and infinite sweeps and reaches 
of a soul. What a boy may become as he out- 
grows the hilarious crudeness of youth (but O, 
let him never outgrow the hilarity!) is as mys- 
terious, as wonderful, as majestic, and altogether 
grand as the infinitude of the wind. The wind 

131 



DOWN TIIK VKAK 

strikes upon one's soul with rush and bufTct and 
shout. So does the boy. The wind whistles and 
sings and runs. So does he. And in the wind arc 
all the energy and powers of wonderful cosmic 
forces. So in him, only they here are the forces 
of a cosmos that transcends even the cosmos of 
the winds. 

Thank God for boys and winds! 

And out of the gorgeous west came the Wind in 
glorious roughness and mighty voice. And I 
stood and watched him come, glad as when my 
boy comes romping home from school. Sweeping 
the earth's upturned face, gathering momentum, it 
seemed, with every one of the thousand leagues 
traversed from the splendid sky, swelling out the 
soul-shaking melody until it seemed that heart 
must burst and soul faint with the grandeur of it, 
the West Wind came across the snowless winter 
day. 

There was a cold sunshine sprinkling down — 
thin, clear, crystallized sunshine like diamonds 
melted and diluted so that the sparkle stayed, 
but the fire and color were quenched — a sunshine 
brilliant but cold, bright but hard, brilliant and 
cold and bright and hard as the music that rings 
from a blue steel blade when it is struck, thrilling 
and shivering. And it was beautiful, this steely 
sunshine, for frost-particles sailed in the wind and 

132 



WHEN THE WIND BLEW 

gave out a thousand glimmers and white sparks. 
But nowhere the color and flash of fire such as 
snow-diamonds show or dewdrops distill under the 
turning and caressing of the sun. The air and 
sun and frost-mist all were neutral. 

And this was right, for this was the day of the 
Wind. God's doings with his wind and sky and 
sun and rain are never inartistic. The great pic- 
ture is limned, the great song sung, the great 
drama played with perfect unity and symmetry. 
No part is allowed to overlap the other and no 
part is crowded out. Each glory has its place and 
each its time for emphasis. Have you never 
noticed how days are endowed with character? 
How they stand out from other days? One day 
is always the bright day; one the rainy day; one 
the gray day; one the spring day; one the cloudy 
day; one the cold, one the warm. And when you 
say thus you say truly, for God's days are the 
days of God's specific doings. So this was the 
day of the Wind. Of course the sim retired his 
brilliance and dazzling lights and showed only the 
cold blue sheen that would never obtrude before 
the wind. Of course the sky — in all but the 
flaming west whence came the wind — put over the 
blue the veil of misty gray, not to hide, but to 
subdue. Of course the earth was brown and soft, 
with nothing to catch and hold the attention. All 

133 



DOWN THE YEAR 

was ready for the Wind when he came, and ready 
to acclaim and not merely to give him precedence. 
This was the day of the Wind, and all the day 
was ordered into a setting for the glorious coming 
of the Wind from the west. One day at a time, 
one work at a time, one responsibility at a time, 
one glory at a time — this is the plan in God's 
great world out-of-doors. Verily, and the plan is 
for one worker at a time and one honor-bearer at 
a time. When will foolish men learn that and be 
governed by it? Each has his work. Let the 
others permit him to do it. And each has his day 
of glory. Let the others of us retire and help 
make it a day of greater glory for our fellow, 
knowing each that his day is also a part of God's 
plan. Sun-glory or sky-glor>' or rain-glory or 
snow-glory all come, but come singly. But, thank 
God, all come! 

All the earth paid homage to the Wind. Not 
all willingly — there were some rebels against the 
lord of the day just as there always are among 
foolish human folks too. Some there were who 
acknowledged the Wind only because they must, 
and bowed before him only when pushed down. 
The tall, noble trees paid him willing worship, 
and in worshiping enhanced their own nobility. 
The fussy shrubs and bushes gave him scant 
courtesy and so made themselves ridiculous. After 

134 



WHEN THE WIND BLEW 

all, there is much of humanity in the so-called 
lower world of vegetable life. 

The maples stood tall and slenderly graceful, 
their long, strong boughs slanting up across the 
sky in bold lines of rugged beauty — the beauty 
that is in what is strong and good like a muscular 
arm or a patient toil-lined and weather-beaten 
countenance. These tall columns bifurcated into 
smaller limbs of the same striking gracefulness 
and strength, and these again into twigs. And 
when the Wind came the maples got a little ex- 
cited — as the strong and good sometimes will — 
and forgot the reserve that becomes strength. 
But they were glad to see the West Wind, never- 
theless, and swung and waved their great boughs, 
a little wildly and awkwardly, but altogether en- 
thusiastically, like the capering of some big, 
good-natured fellow on a holiday with his children. 
But the very awkwardness is fascinating because 
it is so whole-souled. The little branches and 
twigs whipped the sky like limber withes waved — 
a shade too emphatically — to the discomfort of 
the near bystanders. 

The locusts are prickly fellows at best, but they 
are very lovable trees, after all. Their greeting to 
the Wind seemed stiff and surly. But when you 
know the locust you know that he is anything 
but surly, although his appearance belies that es- 

135 



DOWN THE VKAU 

timate of him. When the Wind went past, the 
locusts tried their best to bow gracefully, but 
they could not. There are some men too who 
make spectacles of themselves trying to be gen- 
teel when nature intended them to be hearty. 
The locust is a hearty tree. In spite of his thorns 
he means well. The boughs are too thick and 
stiff to wave and bend gracefully, so they con- 
tented themselves with little, stiff, struggling, un- 
gainly movements. The little twigs all iviggled. 
The whole tree was in a tremendous state. Here 
and there in the grove one burst through his 
temperamental reserve and threw his hat up in 
the air. Yes, your locust would be a ver\' fine 
gentleman if nature had given him a little more 
suavity of manner and more elasticity in his 
make-up. 

Next to the locusts stood two or three elms. 
Here are the true cavaliers of the tree world. 
They stood in towering, graceful, upright nobility 
when the Wind went by, like nobles watching the 
passing of their prince. They held their trunks 
nearly rigid — with only a slight dignified bend — 
the branches and twigs just waved aside for the 
Wind to pass, and all with the most distin- 
guished grace. There they stood, the nobles. 
The prince passed, and they bowed from the 
waist like gentlemen fully aware of their own 

I3<^ 



WHEN THE WIND BLEW 

position, unabashed in the royal presence, and 
each, with graceful flourish and sweep of arm and 
hand, took off his hat. 

The fruit trees acted like good, hard-working 
people, unaccustomed to much outside their rou- 
tine, who had gone nervous and lost all control of 
themselves at the great moment. They were full 
of little, pettish, fidgety, snappy, irritable move- 
ments in all their whole mass of sturdy limbs and 
stubby twigs. The strain of the occasion was too 
great. Every little twig seemed in a tremor, so 
that the whole tree gave the impression of being 
perturbed by something within rather than played 
upon by the great thing that was happening 
around them. 

The bushes just gave little stiff bows and 
squirms and twists. I think they were deter- 
mined to show those lordly elms and sturdy 
locusts and powerful maples that they were just 
as good as anyone, and I believe they bowed to 
the Wind only when compelled by surprise at his 
wonderful sweep and song. 

The vines on wall and trellis thrilled through 
all their length. There was not much movement, 
but a thrill that ran and quivered and trembled 
and murmured all through them. The Wind is 
prince of the vines too, and they love him in a 
quiet, faithful way. 

137 



DOWX THE YEAR 

So the Wind came out of the west, across the 
sere, snowless earth, was greeted by tree and 
bush and vine and me, and passed on into the 
great, wide east. 



138 



WHEN THE SNOW FALLS 

Snow does not always fall. Sometimes it flies. 
Then it is like a flock of white birds, sailing before 
the north wind with the vision in their eyes of the 
sweet air and balmy breeze and languorous sun- 
shine of the south, with backs turned to the chill 
and bluster. It comes soaring out of the sky in 
straight, unswerving lines, as if each flake looked 
at that which men cannot see, even as the bird 
looks at some distant, well-defined and well- 
known goal, and pressed toward it — even as the 
birds — with instinct sure and pinions imwearied. 
In slanting, even-sloping lines, the white atoms 
course leisurely yet unflagging; unhurried yet im- 
hesitant; slipping down the long filamentary lanes 
from sky to earth. When such flakes strike your 
face they come with a little thud and flatten out 
in a tiny splash that feels like a fairy's handful of 
dew-diamonds flung out of the air, and they 
melt at once into a tear, dissolved in disappoint- 
ment at not reaching the end of that long fine, 
sloping roadway to find rest among the welcoming 
brown grass-blades, or eager crumbling dust-atoms, 
or friendly frost-crystals, or fraternal snowflakes of 
a former exodus. 

139 



DOWN THE YEAH 

The flying snow is gentle, but determined. 

Sometimes it flutters. Then it is Uke a flock of 
white butterflies come by mistake to hover over 
dun fields. Fluttering snow is always big and 
soft and fluffy; it could not flutter otherwise, and 
it flutters in a gentle wind that is a surprise. 
P'rom the coziness of a fireside one looks through 
the square vista of a window filled with the white 
snow-butterflies dancing and flitting. Butterflies 
must needs dance; that is their nature. And they 
must needs dance in a warm, sweet, gentle wind. 
These white butterflies dance across the pane 
and in the distance so merrily that one throws 
up the sash and leans out. And the cold wind 
strikes across the cheek and brings a flush, and 
into the nostrils with a tingle, and into the eyes 
and they weep. It is as if a girl had suddenly 
struck one's face with a branch of briars. The 
white butterflies must have the music of a soft 
breeze; how else can they dance so well? But it 
is a cold winter zephyr, and they dance again in 
glee at the discomfiture of the foolish creature 
of the fire who thought there could be no other 
cause for hilarity than warmth and balm, and 
forgot all about the intoxication of an eccentric, 
fitful, gusty, whirling winter wind. 

Go out there among them, and how speedily the 
flush on the cheek becomes a glow, and the tears 

140 



WHEN THE SNOW FALLS 

in the eyes are dissipated in a sparkle, and the 
whole frame tingles, and the whole soul would 
fain flutter and dance too! 

The fluttering snow is hilarious and companion- 
able. 

Sometimes it floats. Then it is like scraps from 
the white summer-day clouds that are piled up 
somewhere above the gray canopy to be ready 
when the time comes to set them floating — great 
mist-bergs in the sea of God's blue sky. The 
floating snow comes down softly, slowly, the 
flakes drifting together, then parting and floating 
side by side a little way, and settles over earth 
and twig and housetop and upturned face like a 
mantle of tenderness. 

Down through the gray day, white and wonder- 
ful against the gray sky, more white and more 
wonderful as they mass and pile against the 
gloomy earth, the flakes of the floating snov/ 
come from the regions where only our faith can 
penetrate; plucked by the angels from God's big 
clouds and made to enwrap a blessing as a child 
puts a kiss among the petals of a flower and 
throws it to a favorite. 

The floating snow is tender and caressing. 

Sometimes it drives. Then it is like crystal 
arrows sent from the bows of peevish elves of the 
air who have been angered at some indiscreet 

141 



DOWN THK M:AK 

familiarity on the part of men and revenge them- 
selves by filling the air so full of sting that the 
presumptuous one cannot venture into it without 
serious discomfort. 

Driving snow is not white; it is a keen, blue- 
gray, steely hue, like the clear smoke that rises 
from a forge when the fire is clean and the iron in 
it is almost tempered and free from impurities. 
The affronted elves do indeed temper their darts, 
and the smoky, driving mist is like the reek from 
the process. Driving snow goes horizontally. 
Perhaps that is why it seems strange and un- 
natural; that and because snow ought to be soft 
and gentle. Soft and gentle and coming down 
from the sky — so we think of snow. But when it 
drives upon the blast it is hard and sharp and 
hurts the face like knives, and sweeps across the 
earth instead of spreading over it; and it is eerie 
and uncanny. You cannot see the flakes when it 
comes that way. It is just a great, strange cloak 
flung out, full of mystery, that looks like pearly 
gossamer, but is a hauberk woven of tempered 
steel strands and shot through with pointed rivets. 

Yet the driving snow, for all its uncanniness and 
cral)bedness, possesses a wonderful charm, for the 
driving snow rides upon the north wind, and the 
north wind orders his flight to the music of a 
diapason unheard in organ -pipe or bombardon, a 

142 



WHEN THE SNOW FALLS 

note too deep to assign to a place on any staff, too 
strange to qualify by any term of tone quality, 
too thrilling to be prisoned by any apparatus of 
voice or string or reed or brass. It is only the 
heart that can know the music of the north wind, 
and only as the heart knows it can one realize its 
power and quality. But out in the midst of the 
steely cloak, eyes sheltered against the flying par- 
ticles, all the world and all the sky shut out by 
the gray mystery, the mighty roll of it booms into 
the soul. 

You cannot see whereon you stand, for the 
ground is hidden. You cannot tell by what you 
are surrounded, for the familiar landscape has 
disappeared. You cannot know what is over you, 
for the sky is covered. When you are in the 
driving snow there is nothing in all the universe 
but a man-creature and the rolling reverberation 
of the north wind. The swelling and ever-swelling 
song swallows up all the smaller sounds: the 
whistle in the trees, the rustle of the bushes, the 
swish of rushing snow ; it fills all the comers of the 
air, all the comers of the world, and submerges 
an>^hing less than itself. A ripple on the smooth 
surface of water is beautiful, but a mounting wave 
is grand, so the little ripple is erased. The song of 
the breeze is refreshing, but the boreal melody is 
majestic; so the little breeze-song is swallowed up. 

143 



DOWN THE YEAR 

Out in the driving snow, that great music docs not 
fill the universe; is is a visible, tangible thing, and 
it swells and grows and becomes bigger and bigger 
until it is the universe. 

The driving snow is pitiless and mysterious, but 
to him who disdains pity it is grand. 

Sometimes it drifts. Then it is like the rolling 
of billows — sweeping, impetuous, graceful, beauti- 
ful. The drifting snow seems never at rest, never 
in motion, but always changing. It seems not to 
come down, but only to change its form and 
place. It piles and builds itself into forms of 
majesty and grandeur, oirves and ledges of in- 
effable grace, swelling mounds and rolling tumuli, 
wide, flat sweeps and glistening plateaux, towering 
cathedrals and lofty spires, shapes of softness and 
curving grace, of rugged and bold beauty; and, 
even as one watches, they merge into one another, 
so that timiulus turns to spire and spire to waving 
crest, plateau to rounded bowl, and rugged ledge 
to fluffy line of delicate beauty. The changes do 
not come; they do not take place; they arc. 
Enough! It is done, and the constant shift and 
transformation, the everlasting change, has never 
yet exhausted the resources of the Great Sculptor 
who molds and fashions this gleaming marble to 
his will. There are more forms of beauty and 
wonder to be seen in a snowdrift than in anything 

144 



WHEN THE SNOW FALLS 

else in God's world except the sweet form of a 
child full of curves and dimples and graces. 

The drifting snow is whelmingly beautiful. 

And sometimes it falls. When the snow falls 
you can see a wonderful thing from your window. 
When the snow falls it is like sweet words bom 
of tender thoughts and set free to pursue their 
own unliampered way through the world. And so 
it comes down softly and beautifully and covers 
all the earth softly and beautifully. The falling 
snow brings, without loss, the thoughts of God. 
The window frames a dazzling view and the world 
out there is a dazzling world. But not through 
frame nor window pane, nor even opened case- 
ment, is the way to see the snow falling; one must 
go out in it, and wander in the maze of it, and feel 
the caress of it on hands and cheeks like a baby's 
kisses, cool and chaste, and breathe the delicious 
chill of it down, deep down, into the heart, where 
it is fused into thoughts of wonder and words of 
praise and a song of sheer exhilaration. No one 
knows anything about snow who is afraid of 
getting it on him. And the only way a snow- 
storm means anything at all is to plunge into the 
dancing heart of it and tramp and flounder and 
sing and scream and turn your face upward and 
merge into the great, vast, misty universe of gray 
sky and dim trees and muffled earth and silence. 

145 



DOWN THE YEAH 

The snow is a magic wonder; it transports gross 
bodies like this of mine out into a world of ethereal 
wonder and deep mystery. And it is a deep joy 
just to get it on you. 

But what a transformed world it is! The lines 
and angles and sliarp contours and bounding lines 
are all gone. There is no division line even be- 
tween earth and sky. As you peer out into the 
whirling air there is a deep, dark gray that begins 
at your feet and sweeps out around and up to 
merge into a lighter gray that circles and em- 
braces and in turn thins into a pearly gray that is 
lightest of all and which springs and arches into a 
great dome overhead. The dark gray is the earth 
veiled in the snow; the lighter gray — the band 
that lies just above it — is the bulk of the trees 
and bushes where a little light of the sky comes 
through, and the pearl gray is the sk-y doming up 
over it all. But where earth leaves off and shrub- 
bery begins, or where the sky meets the middle 
zone, no eye can see. And the vision rides in 
swooping, soaring fashion up and out in one 
grand flight from nadir to zenith on the most 
perfect of gradations of gray-tones — without a 
line, without a division, without any little break or 
jar, one unbroken ascent. There is no horizon when 
it snows and no one can say where earth ends and 
heaven begins, or whether all is not heaven. 

146 



WHEN THE SNOW FALLS 

And it is. It is one of God's great mercies that 
sometimes he lets us see just how his universe is 
built and to view his plan of it. And then we 
know that there is no real division line between 
his territory and ours, between his sky, his heaven, 
and our earth; it is only that we have imagined 
there is one there. Why be afraid of the snow? 
That is when earth and sky come thus together. 
Why dread the cold and bluster of the times of 
adversity and the winter of sacrifice? It is then 
that we really come to see the truth that all is of 
God. And there is no horizon between the things 
that are high and the things that are low except 
as we make it ourselves. 

The familiar things are all veiled in a veil of the 
sheerest texture imaginable. The snow-filled air 
is like filmy gossamer spangled with silver stars 
and folded and doubled until it bars the sight 
where the folds are thick and dims it everywhere. 
And through the mist of it, among the silver star- 
flakes, the old familiar trees and houses and bams 
and fences look softened and beautified. God's 
world is always beautiful and no less when trees 
are bare and earth is dun. It is always beautiful. 
So is a woman's face, and no less when the first 
blush and flowerlike brilliance of youth have 
given place to the more staid beauty of woman- 
hood. But wrap the earth of springtime in a veil 

147 



DOWN THE YEAR 

of apple blossoms, and how transcendent and 
heart-melting becomes her beauty! Veil a sweet 
maiden in a bridal veil, and you do not know her 
because of the new beauty it puts into her face. 
Veil the leafless earth in a bridal veil of falling 
snow, and you know not the place of soul-shaking 
beauty it becomes. Veil a woman in the habit of 
the bride, and the new softness and deepened 
strength of her face will make a new countenance. 
The earth under the falling snow is like a woman 
under a bridal veil who has waited to put it on 
until there is nothing of her beauty left except 
what will remain through the years and not fade 
and fall like the dainty beauty of a girl or the 
delicate blossoms and leaves of spring. The trees 
are a little rugged perhaps, but the good old 
limbs and twigs are always there, while leaf and 
blossom are inconstant. How good God is ! Trees 
and bushes and vines and men and women may 
contemplate with dismay the transitor\' character 
of the springtime beauties, but the sturdy, char- 
acterful graces of the colder seasons are permanent. 
And the veil of the snow is as sheer and beautiful 
and as pleasant to wear as the veil of apple 
blossoms. 

And the snow softens and makes ineffably 
graceful the familiar things of one's little world. 
Angles are rounded, lines are blurred, surfaces re- 

148 



WHEN THE SNOW FALLS 

lieved, roughness covered, dun-colored bark and 
weather-browned boards silvered, and all beautiful 
with the strange beauty of a familiar thing when 
seen in its true character, though long considered 
uncouth and commonplace. For it requires much 
of God's forbearance and a great many folds of 
the veil to reveal to us the truth, and I think he 
must be often near the limit of divine patience 
because we will not look at the roughness and 
uncouthness through the right atmosphere. There 
is nothing ugly in what God does. But we need to 
have our eyes shut to very much before we can 
see the beauty in many of his treasures, and that 
is why snow falls through the air and why some 
dim days come to a man's life. 

When the wind blows the veil is rent and you 
can look through the tears and catch clear glimpses 
of tree and house and familiar hill. But it is only 
a glimpse; the wonder is too great, and the veil 
swirls together again and all is soft and misty 
and beautiful with the beauty of the snow. At 
some seasons you must look at even the familiar 
things through the mist and mystery. You 
would not know their beauty else. 

When you see the wreaths of smoke from a 
chimney floating among the flakes you see a 
strange thing. Yet it is the combination of gray 
reek and white flake that is strange, not the smoke 

149 



DOWN THE YEAH 

nor the snow. But, somehow, smoke among the 
snow looks queer. It is qucH?r, but it is amazingly 
beautiful too. The soft, misty, curling plume 
twists itself in and out among the flying flakes 
almost like a thing of life. The smoke is all one 
mass, a blue-gray, vapory mass, while the snow 
is a myriad of fragments. To see the misty mass 
rising among the gleaming fragments, to see the 
fragments shooting through the mass, and all the 
time the weird flicker of gray among the white, is 
an experience of wonder no less than the gray 
wonder of the arching welkin. In fact, it seems 
almost as if a shred had been torn from that gray 
sky and thrown down to enveil and mystify the 
eyes which would look upon the mystery of the 
winter. 

But it is not eerie, this striking combination of 
gray and white, of mass and fragment. It is un- 
usual, but not uncanny. One does not know the 
possibilities either of smoke or of snow until he 
sees them in combination. Either one is ver\' 
commonplace, but together they are ver>' re- 
markable. I wonder if a good deal of the uninter- 
estingness of our everyda}'' experiences is not due 
to our failure to try out new combinations of 
familiar things. There are only a comparatively 
few elements known to chemists, but from these 
are formed, by various combinations, compounds 

150 



WHEN THE SNOW FALLS 

greater in number than may be covinted. Life is 
made up of about the same ingredients wherever 
we see it, and the sameness palls on many until the 
soul is sick. But the same elements combined in 
different proportions and different manner might 
make of it a most wonderful thing. So common- 
place a thing as our love for company and its 
gratification by gathering one's friends around him 
at dinner may, by a new combination, be made to 
yield an amazing zest. And it is not a new thing 
either. A GaHlaean Peasant hit on this particular 
combination a long time ago. He said, "When 
thou makest a feast, go out and call the poor, the 
maimed, and the blind." Now here is a new thing 
under the sun. A man's social life and his friend- 
ships, like a silver mist that glorifies his per- 
sonality, are to be brought into combination with 
his charity (Charity, forsooth! Charity properly 
means love, and we make it mean grudged alms!), 
the cold, white flakes of which may be showered 
ever so thickly about him, but are as cold as the 
snow. Yes, his social life and his charity brought 
together like the smoke and the snow! I do not 
know whether any in Galilee tried the plan or 
not, but many since then have, and the new 
combination of familiar things has brought a 
beauty and interest imdreamed into their lives. 
The commonplace elements may always be com- 

151 



DOWN THE VEAU 

bined differently. How foolish wc are to persist 
in keeping to the same old compounds — that have 
palled upon us and dulled the keen edge of life — 
when the mixture of love with duty, heart with 
work, soul with charity, or some other unusual 
combination will bring all the wonders of a fresh 
life to our jaded souls! 

I am glad God let me see the smoke among the 
snowflakes one day. 

When you look at the falling snow it seems tu- 
multuous and impetuous, a turbulent rush and 
tossing and crossing and confusion of atoms. 
The downward rush of flakes seems swift and 
impetuous; there is no rest in the wild career 
between heaven and earth, and the eye is con- 
fused and bewildered until it seems that there is 
nothing in all the world but flying snow that must 
fly forever and never come to rest. 

But this is because you try to see too much at 
once. God has not made us big enough of vision 
to comprehend all that goes on about us, even all 
of a snowstorm. So we too frequently try to 
glimpse all the universe, and fail, and decide that 
it is all a muddle, and there is no beauty in it, and 
no purpose behind it, and perhaps no God over it. 
And sometimes we try to gather into one glance 
all that our own lives contain. You cannot do 
that either. Each day is a cross-section, and you 

152 



WHEN THE SNOW FALLS 

can glimpse only that. It takes years to make a 
life and it takes decades to fit a life rightly into 
God's scheme of things; neither one can be done 
at a glance, nor can one see at a glance how it is 
going to be done. So there is only a confused im- 
pression of hurrying, criss-crossing, opposing events 
when one takes a look at things in general, and 
there is just the same impression when you try to 
comprehend the fall of the snow in the large. 
Some things must be viewed in the large. In 
fact, if you want to succeed in anything within 
your own power, you must view it in the large. 
But some things you must view in part, and leave 
the large view to God until such time as he sees 
fit to make your eyes and your soul big enough to 
compass it all, because these things are in his 
power and not yours. The same God is God of 
the snowstorm and God of the life of a man. 
And while you may see only a rush of unrelated 
and haphazard happenings, or a mixing and moil- 
ing flurry of flying snow, God knows what is hap- 
pening — ^for he is doing it. 

Single out one flake as soon as it comes into 
view at the square top of the field of vision and 
follow it to earth, and you will see a different 
movement altogether from that of hurry and 
tumult. It sails lightly, flutteringly, gracefully, 
waveringly downward like a bit of thistledown or 

153 



DOWN THE YKAR 

a feather from the wing of a white bird which 
soars so high as to be invisible. Its movement is 
slow and flitting. It sinks a Httle way, then joins 
a comrade and they float side by side for a time, 
then part and each settles gracefully and softly 
down upon the bosom of the old brown mother. 
The white flakes seem so proud of their brown 
earth-mother, and so glad to find her bosom again 
after their visit to the sky by way of the sunbeam 
roadways. 

And single out the things that seem confused 
and jumbled through the world and see how 
gently, beautifully, gracefully, and, finally, how 
softly and restfully the God of snow and souls 
drops each into its place among the others and 
makes of them all together a white mantle for 
his goodness. 

You cannot see the snow against the sky; it 
needs the dark background of dun earth and 
brown forest before you can see it at all. The 
top of the field of view in a snowstorm is cut 
square across as with a plane, and the flakes 
come floating down from out the invisible like 
the thoughts that come from somewhere when 
the twilight glimmers and the hands are folded 
and the eyes cannot see far. But they come, the 
thoughts and the snowflakes, down out of the 
great mystery. And the flakes fall on one's face 

154 



WHEN THE SNOW FALLS 

with a caress, and the thoughts bathe one's 
heart like an angel's whisper, and the unseen 
comes very near. Somewhere out yonder the 
white flakes are made. Somewhere out yonder 
the good things of heaven and human life — dear 
voices and deep eyes and loving hearts — are 
fashioned. And flakes and blessings come float 
ing in to us out of the unseen and we cannot see 
them imtil they come against the dark back- 
ground of the world we live in. How could we 
appreciate the snow without the old brown, 
sober earth to see it against? How could we 
know just how good God is without the tone of 
sereness that creeps into our lives as we pass 
along through and from the springtime and 
summer to see it against? This sere time is rich 
because it sets out the dear white things that 
come out of God's infinite goodness like the 
snowflakes out of his fathomless gray sky. 

So the snow falls, and the blessings come, and 
I cannot see them until they stand out against 
the dark things my eyes will turn to in spite of 
me. But because the snow and the blessings 
come, and because they make the brown all the 
more beautiful and are made the more beautiful 
by it, and because they can come from nowhere 
else, I know that up yonder above the planed top 
of the field of my vision, up there somewhere be- 

155 



DOWN TJIK YEAR 

yond the browns and gray and sereness, inclosing 
them all, glorifying them all, loving them all, 
and using them all — brown trees and gray cloud 
and white flake and sere field and sober heart 
and patient soul — is God. 

It is a strange and wonderful time when the 
snow falls. 



156 



WINTER DUSK . 

Beyond the casement's angled glow 

The meadow stretches, cold and dim; 
Beyond the mead a bare hedgerow, 

Above the hedge, like rapiers slim. 
The eerie birch boughs slash and scar 

The rigid, freezing, steely sky; 
Above the ghostly tree a star — 

Beyond the star — wide mystery. 



157 



